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KRIPTS

S

MARNE

traduzione

Üzbersetzung

preklad

перевести

SALIN

traduccion

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Translation  

Salin

翻译

eadar-theangachadh

T

   ranslation is my parallel and imperfect art. Parallel because I’ve been translating my friends’ Filipino and Bikol poetry and prose for almost as long as I’ve been writing my own poetry. And that’s for more than 30  years now. And it has proceeded both as a twin creative impulse: a creative act in itself while it presents problems and challenges not quite different from what my own work poses for me; and it is also a pleasurable creative adventure that gives me the bragging rights for not only having read the work of the great Filipino poets and authors but also having written them.

And it is imperfect because translation itself is an unceasing endeavor, where the translated text is forever interacting with the original, acutely aware that no two languages are exactly alike, or can match each other word for word, nor can they generate meaning in exactly the same way. It also humbles the translator in keeping him conscious that translation is a perishable art: there are almost yearly editions of the Bible or the Vedas or the Divine Comedy. Or Gilgamesh, Iliad, Beowulf, or Hudhud. And the translation now will not always be the translation for tomorrow (much less the translator). Because times, readers, and readings change. Language changes. And the imagination, as it regards reality and itself, keeps retelling its own narrative. 

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Within and without my country of grief,          

betrayal reigns, is enshrined, esteemed;

degraded everywhere, the heart’s goodness

is consigned to the lowly pauper’s grave.

            All manner of good and deed are cast                

into the sea of mockery and perturbation,

each good man is treated without respect,

without burial rite entombed.

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