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Psie smutki

Sunday 31 December 2006

I dislike my translation very much. There’s no child’s voice in it, no simplicity. But it gives you the idea of what the poem’s about…

On the bank of a sky-blue river
live many small sorrows.
The first is sad because
he can’t play in the garden.
The second — that water doesn’t want to be dry.
The third — that a fly flew into his ear.
And what’s more, that cats scratch,
That he can’t catch the hen,
That he can’t bite the neighbor’s leg,
and that it never rains sausages,
And the last sorrow is that
People travel by cars, and a pup has to go on foot.
But just give him a little milk,
and bye bye sorrows.

Na brzegu błÄ™kitnej rzeczki
MieszkajÄ… małe smuteczki.
Ten pierwszy jest z tego powodu,
Że nie wolno wchodzić do ogrodu,
Drugi – że woda nie chce być sucha,
Trzeci – że mucha wleciała do ucha,
A jeszcze, że kot musi drapać,
Å»e kura nie daje siÄ™ złapać,
Że nie można gryźć w nogę sąsiada
I że z nieba kiełbasa nie spada,
A ostatni smuteczek jest o to,
Å»e człowiek jedzie, a piesek musi biec piechotÄ….
Lecz wystarczy pieskowi dać mleczko
I już nie ma smuteczków nad rzeczkÄ….

State Sentence

Saturday 30 December 2006

We’ve all seen the picture of the hooded executioners putting the noose around Saddam’s neck. The International Herald Tribune and the New York Times ran it on their main pages, as did al Jazeera‘s English website. The Washington Post didn’t.

What struck me about the photo was the lack of officialness about everything.

  • The executioners are wearing street clothes.
  • The room looks relatively small, and suspiciously like a randomly chosen room in a building’s basement.
  • The executioners are wearing tattered ski masks.
  • Not only are the executioners not wearing uniforms; not a single uniform is visible anywhere.

Of course, it’s difficult to tell much of anything about the room itself with such a closely cropped photo.

Still, what immediately came to mind when I first saw this was the obvious similarity to all the beheading videos released from Iraq. It hardly looks like an official state action.

Thoughts on Translation

Saturday 30 December 2006

Writing the translation for “Bajka iskierki” was a fairly easy task, but there were a few words that gave me pause.

To begin with, there’s the title: Bajka iskierki. A literal rendering would be “Fairy Tale of the Ember.” But that implies that it’s a fairy tale about some little ember.

Yet it’s not that straightforward, for equally possible is “Fairy Tale of an Ember.”

Ah, those article-less languages give us a fit sometimes when we’re translating them to German or English or Spanish or Greek—any language with “a/an” and “the.”

Is this a “bajka” that the ember told—the only cognitive, communicative ember in the whole ash pit (we’ll return to that later)? Or is it a “bajka” that one of many embers could have told?

“The” gives it more import than “an,” and so I went with the latter.

Next: the question of “bajka.” When to use “fairy tale”�? When to use “story”�? When to use “bedtime story”�? Indeed, when to use “cartoon,”� as in “OglÄ…damy bajkÄ™?” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Tom and Jerry” would both be called “bajka” in Polish. So all these would be acceptable translations in given circumstances, though the most strict translation is “fairy tale.” But “fairy tale” doesn’t capture the sense of this being something told when little WojtuÅ› is going to sleep, and so I changed it to “bedtime story.”

What about “zgasić“? In common usage, you “zgasi懔 a fire, or a cigerette. Literally, it’s “to die out” — or “to burn out” — or “to be put out”� or “to be extinguished,” — or, more actively, “to extinguish.” But none of these sound very poetic at all — not that “die” sounds any better.

Finally, there’s “popielnik.” “Ash pit”? There’s got to be a better term, but I can’t find it in any dictionary, and I can’t find it on the internet, and I certainly can’t find it in my own head. So I took the liberty of changing it to “the fire’s ashes,”� even though that’s not really what it says.

To translate poetry, one must be a poet — it’s that simple. The translation of poetry is completely unlike the translation of a legal document. With legal translation, you want as nearly as possible to translate every word exactly as it is. There’s no taking license with a legal document.

With poetry, the idea seems to me to be entirely different: read the poem in the original language; then read it again, and again, and again � until you know it almost by heart. Then take a piece of paper and write the same poem in your target language.

Bajka iskierki

Friday 29 December 2006

I’ve put together a new video. For the music, I chose one of the most widely known Polish lullabies: “Bajka iskierka” (“An Ember’s Bedtime Story”). It’s a modern-ish version by Polish pop stars Grzegorz Turnau and Magda Umer.

An Ember’s Bedtime Story
Traditional Melody, Words by Janina Porazińska

From the fire’s ashes
an ember is winking at WojtuÅ›.
“Come! I’ll tell you a bedtime story,
A long fairy tale.

“There once was a princess
who fell in love with a minstrel
The king gave them a wedding,
And that’s the end of the story.

“Long ago lived Baba Jaga.
She lived in a hut made of butter.
And in this house all was enchantment.”
Psst! The ember’s died.

From the fire’s ashes
an ember is winking at WojtuÅ›.
“Come! I’ll tell you a bedtime story,
A long fairy tale.”

Hush! WojtuÅ› won’t believe you anymore,
little ember.
You flicker but for a moment,
then you die.

And that’s the whole fairy tale.

Z popielnika na Wojtusia
iskiereczka mruga:
Chod?, opowiem ci bajeczk?,
bajka b?dzie d?uga.

By?a sobie raz kr�lewna,
pokocha?a grajka,
Kr�l wyprawi? im wesele
i sko?czona bajka.

By?a sobie Baba Jaga
mia?a chatk? z mas?a,
a w tej chatce same dziwy!
Psst� Iskierka zgas?a.

Z popielnika na Wojtusia
iskiereczka mruga:
Chod?, opowiem ci bajeczk?,
bajka b?dzie d?uga.

Ju? ci Wojtu? nie uwierzy,
iskiereczko ma?a.
Chwilk? b?y?niesz,
potem zga?niesz.

Ot i bajka ca?a.

Enter: LMS, Part IV :: A Brief, Predictable Interlude

Wednesday 27 December 2006

All my life, I’ve had an impossible, unlikely scenario in my head: driving my laboring wife to the hospital, I get pulled over by the police for speeding.

We’re about eight miles from the hospital. It’s early Saturday morning. There’ll be no traffic, so I decide we’ll forget the back routes (which are really a touch longer, but less traveled) and go the main way.

About a mile down the road, we realize K doesn’t have her wallet. We go back, get the wallet, and start again.

K is groaning and begging me to hurry; the road is deserted; I speed up and do between 65 and 70 mph on a quiet highway with a speed limit of 45 mph.

As I near the intersection with the main road in town, the highway curves gently to the right, slightly downhill.

On the left side of the street is an Ingles. In a small darkened access road to the left sits a car. I know what it is immediately.

We come to the stop light, and I look in the rear view mirror — there he sits, though his lights are not on. I decided I’ll go ahead and pull over preemptively, but when the light turns green, his lights turn on. I pull over.

Fortunately, the officer is reasonable and lets me go with a warning to drive carefully.

But no offer to escort me? Come on! That’s not how we all envision it!

Enter: LMS, Part III :: 4 a.m., Saturday

Tuesday 26 December 2006

K awakens me with the news: “I think my water broke.”

Again, from birthing classes, we know that this is not a sign to rush to the hospital immediately. There are still no contractions, and the trick for knowing when to go to the hospital is 4-1-1 — contractions which are four minutes apart, last for one minute each, and continue like this for one hour.

“All this is part of early labor,” the birthing instructor informed us weeks ago. “This could last for hours, and it’s important for mothers to be as relaxed as possible. Go for a walk. Take a hot bath. Watch your favorite movie,” her advice continued.

We’d decided we’d watch My Big, Fat Greek Wedding — a movie about an amusing clash of cultures not entirely unlike what my family experienced at our own, Polish wedding.

But who wants to watch a movie at four in the morning?

K decides to call the midwife, just to make sure everything is fine. She learns that we need to meet at the hospital by eight if nothing has happened. “If contractions do not begin within four hours of water breaking, we’ll need to induce labor,” she explains.

We begin last minute preparations for our big adventure.

Once everything is packed, I come back to the computer and publish the pre-prepared post about going to the hospital. I set the time for eight, figuring that no matter what, we’d be on our way by then.

As I’m finishing up, K informs me that her first contraction has hit. It’s 4:15 a.m., and the contraction lasts about fifteen seconds, and about four minutes later, the second hits, also fifteen seconds.

Four minutes later, the third: about thirty-five seconds.

Four minutes later, the fourth: about forty-five seconds.

K tells me we’re going to the hospital within a few minutes. I’m still skeptical.

A little over an hour later, at 5:30, we leave for the hospital.

The Search for a Pacific Baby

Sunday 24 December 2006

The pacifier is an innocuous looking little bit of plastic and rubber, but the British English term seems more indicative of its less-than-ideal nature: the dummy.

The pacifier is a substitute — no one denies that. When an infant is whinny, colicky, unable to sleep, there’s nothing like the instinctual sucking motions of all infants to calm them down. Yet a baby cannot feed indefinitely, hence the pacifier — the dummy nipple.

It’s an easy, logical answer: all the comforting sucking without the overeating. Yet, it seems akin to using the television as a babysitter. It’s an easy answer. And so, as parents, we all have to make the decision as to whether or not we’ll use one with our child.

With L, we experimented with one briefly when she was upset, rooting, and yet definitely fed. To our relief, L would suck on it for a moment, then either spit it out or allow it to be taken out.

“So a pacifier works,” we thought. A bit of a relief when you have a colicky baby.

Then I did a little reading and found that it’s not a good idea to use a pacifier with a baby who’s breastfeeding, at least until the baby is a month old and has mastered nursing (a skill both mother and daughter have had to learn, but that’s an entirely different story). The sucking motions are completely different, and using a pacifier sucking motion on while feeding results in underfeeding — not a good idea when the baby hasn’t even returned to her birth weight yet.

And so, we put the pacifier away for good. Yet that leaves the question, how do you calm a panicky, colicky baby? We’ve found a few things that work with L — any suggestions?