This is an old revision of the document!
Table of Contents
Total Translation
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.
Overview
This essay descrives the origins, process and justification for a novel method of translation and presentation. Addressing the performative and temporal qualities of oral performance, Rothenberg sets out consider how to represent “sounds that weren't, stricklty speaking 'words' … (which) tended to disappear or be attenuated in translation, as if they weren't really there. But they were there and werea at least as important as the words themselves” (382).
The approach blends a “close-listening” attention during transcription and the development of methods for visually representing aural phenomena on th epage.
Context of Performance and Transcription
Rothenberg's own total translations include collaboration with Richard Johnny Johns from the Seneca. See Shaking the Pumpkin also includes links to audio, which render graphical layouts that adopt techniques of concrete poetry.
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. First Horse Song of Frank Mitchell.
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.
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).
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.
Influences and Correspondences
Rothenberg's framing of “Total Translation” informs many translations/ transcriptions published in the journal Alcheringa, including these exemplars.
See also the transcription / translation associated with Dennis Tedlock in _Finding the Center_ and _The Spoken Word and the Work of Written Interpretation_
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.
