Kate Armstrong: Scottish Poetry

Rather than a literal adhesion to the words of the poem the progression towards a 'loopy' and half loony sense of enjoyment had to be expressed.

Rhythm is obviously always important when translating literature, particularly poetry. Here the rhythm in the original is loosely based on the pentameter, so the lines in the French version will occasionally be 'alexandrins' or twelve-syllable lines, which is the equivalent classical prosody. (I don't want to reopen an ongoing controversy on the 'proper' translation of classical meter. I know that the 'feel' of a French twelve-syllable line is bound to be radically different from the 'feel' of an English line based on five stresses. Forget about the iambic thing: the unstressed-stressed pattern is as often breached as adhered to, even in Wordsworth's sonnets, say. A similarity is that they both emerge almost naturally from the rhythm of spoken language, and that they will be immediately recognised stamped or branded - as classical).

Another standard issue in literary translation is the extent to which a sense of the foreign ought to be preserved. Should readers be aware of the 'Scottishness' of it all? And how can the translator contribute to this awareness? I have no ready-made answer. Some poems will call for a more foreign feel than others. It seems to be perceptible in the anthology as a whole since a reviewer wrote 'l'Ecosse est très présente' (Le cri d'os, June 1999, 144). As Venuti, who is known as the great advocate of foreignization, remarks and also admits, translation necessarily involves a measure of domestication, but simultaneously challenges both the target language and its cultural assumptions in that it introduces a foreign text.

Here are some more detailed comments, leaving out obvious sound effects (those alliterations and assonances that contribute to the cohesion of the poem as poem).

I felt that the opening line had to be more of a direct address than the rather bland 'Nous sommes ici pour célébrer le mariage'. Therefore the crispier 'Nous voici réunis' (which also makes for a more balanced 'alexandrin').

'Smirr' in line 3 already is a typical Scots word, but it does not disturb a still fairly solemn diction. I hope 'ondée' will do,. It combines 'rainlike' and 'smirr' and its brevity compensates for the expension of 'Ignore' into no less than seven syllables (so four more than in the original since I left out 'please', expressed in the use of a first person plural instead of an imperative). 'Ignore' is a difficult verb which can occasionally translate as 'ignorer', but generally - as is the case here - means 'overlook', 'disregard'; but 'dédaigner' would be too strong.

For the next verb, however, 'never mind the steam engine', which has pretty much the same kind of connotations, I felt that 'dédaigner' was OK, since the idea is not to pay attention to the kind of exhibits that might have pride of place. But we don't want to become too serious either. 'Top table' is an amusing cross between 'high table' and 'at the top of the table', but it isn't actually a pun, so I couldn't translate with some distorsion like 'table donneuse' (playing on 'd'honneur'/'donneur', as for members in an association).

The main problem in translating this poem was to know how to convey the shift in language, how to express the greater familiarity that can be felt in the dialectal forms, even when we have no direct access to them. My answer was to use the French dialect that is still spoken by some and understood by a larger number of people in my part of Wallonia: Liège Walloon.

Differences in status between Walloon and Scots are obvious: while Scots is largely, and increasingly, felt to be a valid national language, Walloon has been declining for decades (a recent illustration of this phenomenon being the demise of a local theatre company that had specialized in Walloon plays). Children no longer have to be forbidden to speak Walloon at school or elsewhere since very few have any notion of how to speak it. Special classes have been set up to check this waning tendency, but it may be too late.

Walloon was the vernacular of my grandparents, it is known and understood by my mother, who is still able to form sentences in the idiom, my generation still understands it, but my children wonder what kind of foreign language it might be. This, however, is a great loss in the diversity of languages, and a great loss in term of expressivity too. Like all local dialects, that is, like all languages that belong to the oral tradition and have long been part of common every day life, it retains phrases that have no standard equivalents to suggest some sensations or actions. (Apart from expressivity another parallel between Scots and Walloon is their local diversity.)

Just as the original can still be understood by an anglophone reader who has no notion of Scots, so my translation had to be accessible to a monolingual francophone reader. For 'ramstam daftie dancer' 'grand dadais de danseur' is explicit enough, 'estèné' (literally that has been hit hard on the head and no longer quite knows what is going on) adds the Walloon dimension without disturbing an easy understanding. 'S'trébouhe' is not very different from 'trébucher' - but more tottering - and the French word 'pavé' can be heard underneath 'paveye'. 'S'tape à rire' is a local phrase too, which suggests great slappings of thighs or shoulders.

Now 'bairn' and 'hame' are Scots words too, so ought consistently to have been translated by Walloon words. But here readers might have been lost. The Walloon word 'mohone' has all the warm homely connotations of 'home', but would have been a source of puzzlement for francophone readers. I am aware, though, that the last lines are rather lame in my French version and would be grateful or any suggestion.

One last word. Whereas it is usually argued that translation is a solitary business, part of the pleasure I derive from translating lies in the collaboration and exchange with others, mostly with my mother, and also, in this case, with the author herself.

Read more ... The Translator

Picture of Family:© Frank Lowe 

Picture of Spinning Wheel:© Dr D.M Cockburn

Picture of Steam Train:© Dr D.M Cockburn

Picture of Group:© Scottish Life Archive neg no. c8442

Picture of two old men:© Dr D.M Cockburn

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