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| omnipoetics:total_translation_-_rothenberg [2025/04/09 16:01] – created admin | omnipoetics:total_translation_-_rothenberg [2025/04/23 16:13] (current) – [Author: Jerome Rothenberg] admin |
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| ====== Total Translation ====== | ====== Total Translation ====== |
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| Rothenberg, Jerome. "Total Translation: An Experiment in the Presentation of American Indian Poetry" Rpt in //Symposium of the Whole// (381-393). Appears in Rothenberg //Pre-faces and Other Writing// New Directions, 1981. | =====Author: Jerome Rothenberg ===== |
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| | form Symposium of the Whole (381-393) |
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| | Appears in Rothenberg //Pre-faces and Other Writing// New Directions, 1981. |
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| | {{ :omnipoetics:shaking.jpg?direct&600 | scholarly critical fair use from Rothenberg, Shaking the Pumpkin}} |
| ===== Overview ===== | ===== Overview ===== |
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| The approach blends a "close-listening" attention during transcription and the development of methods for visually representing aural phenomena on th epage. | The approach blends a "close-listening" attention during transcription and the development of methods for visually representing aural phenomena on th epage. |
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| | <blockquote> |
| | "Translation is carry-over. It is a means of delivery and of bringing to life. It begins with a forced change of language, but a change too that opens up the possiblity of greater understanding. Everything in these song-poems is finally translatable: words, sounds ,voice, melody, gesture, event, etc., in the reconstitution of a unity that woudl be shattered by approaching each element in isolation. A full and total experience begins it, which only a total translation can fully bring across." (392) |
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| | </blockquote> |
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| ===== Context of Performance and Transcription ===== | ===== Context of Performance and Transcription ===== |
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| Rothenberg's own total translations include collaboration with Richard Johnny Johns from the Seneca. See [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:1-1:opening_songs_from_shaking_the_pumpkin|Shaking the Pumpkin]], which render graphical layouts that adopt techniques of concrete poetry. [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:1-1:from_shaking_the_pumpkin|See also]] | Rothenberg's own total translations include collaboration with Richard Johnny Johns from the Seneca. See [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:1-1:from_shaking_the_pumpkin|Shaking the Pumpkin]] [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:1-1:opening_songs_from_shaking_the_pumpkin|also includes links to audio]], which render graphical layouts that adopt techniques of concrete poetry. |
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| In a retranslation of Navajo Horse Songs, the method is more akin to creating a performative score, where the reading text provides a guide for speaking aloud and capture the oscillation between semantic speech and vocables. This was earlier published in Alcheringa 1.1 along with a "Note" that prefigures the fuller discussion in this essay. [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:1-1:the_first_horse-song_of_frank_mitchell&s[]=navajo|First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell]]. | In a retranslation of Navajo Horse Songs, the method is more akin to creating a performative score, where the reading text provides a guide for speaking aloud and capture the oscillation between semantic speech and vocables. This was earlier published in Alcheringa 1.1 along with a "Note" that prefigures the fuller discussion in this essay. [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:1-1:the_first_horse-song_of_frank_mitchell&s[]=navajo|First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell]]. |
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| ===== Influences and Correspondences ===== | The approach Rothenberg describes is notably flexible or idiosyncratic. It is not a strict system whereby a "space" of 2 cm translates to a pause of 1 second. "Total" should be understood as aspirational or ironic, as the process underscores the impossibility of representing the full dimensions of the experience for audiences of the event. But it underscores that a poem-as-event would include more than the verbal text, and gestures towards that fullness. |
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| Rothenberg's framing of "Total Translation" informs many translations/ transcriptions published in the journal Alcheringa, including these [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:exemplary_transcriptions&s[]=total&s[]=translation|exemplars]]. | Noteable also is the creative, immersive and musical approach, where Rothenberg describes chanting along in English to develop or emulate by sounding: "important for me was actually being in the stimulus and response situation, certainly the most //physical// translation I have ever been inovled in. I hope that much comes through for anyone woh hears these sung" (392). Importantly, Rothenberg also admits: "I'm not trying to coerce anyone (least of all myself) with the idea of a single relevant approach to translation..." (393). |
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| See also the transcription / translation associated with Dennis Tedlock in _Finding the Center_ and _The Spoken Word and the Work of Written Interpretation_ | Technology also plays a role in the development of total translation. Most translated texts from prior to the 1960s involved someone notating speech without the aid of audio recording. This process may have contributed to a devaluing of the aural/musical and temporal qualities. Many translated Native American poems, for instance, eliminate repetitions and vocables to present a print text that will be satisfying as a conventional poem to readers unfamiliar with oral aesthetics. |
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| | ===== Influences and Correspondences ===== |
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| | Rothenberg's framing of "Total Translation" informs many translations/ transcriptions published in the journal Alcheringa, including these [[https://wiki.ethnopoetics.org/doku.php?id=alcheringa:exemplary_transcriptions&s[]=total&s[]=translation|exemplars]]. |
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| | See also the transcription / translation associated with Dennis Tedlock in _Finding the Center_ and _The Spoken Word and the Work of Written Interpretation_ |
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| | //Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America// ed. Brian Swann, 1996 features a number of other performances translated and transcribed in "total" fashion. |
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| | {{tag>Seneca_Nation Translation oral_tradition sacred concrete_poetry}} |
