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Translating Camões Landeg White Títulos publicados: In the comprehensive and authoritative Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Estudos de Do Jornalismo aos Media edited by Mona Baker, David Connolly, Comunicação Rogério Santos Landeg White comments ‘translators … rarely keep notes e Cultura was born in south Wales and now lives about the process of translation or any record of Translating Europe across the Ages Poesias de Ossian near Mafra. He spent his professional the choices made in the process,’ adding Gerald Bär career teaching in the Universities of ‘it is precisely insights into this process that are the West Indies, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Proximidade e Distância missing from most theoretical models.’ Zambia, York, (where he directed the Mario Franco | Bernd Sieberg In 1997, Landeg White published his verse Centre for Southern African Studies) translation of Camões’s The Lusíads, and in Record a Personal Camões: Translating A Cultura Portuguesa no Divã and the Universidade Aberta in 2008 followed it up with verse translations of Isabel Capeloa Gil | Adriana Martins Lisbon. Since 2011 he as been Senior Camões’s Collected Lyric Poems. This short Researcher at the Research Centre for book, a contribution to the CECC series on Formas de Ver e Dizer Communication and Culture, CECC. Filomena Viana Guarda ‘Translating Europe through the ages’, Translating Camões: His books include V.S. Naipaul: a is a personal record of that experience. Intellectual Topographies and Critical Introduction (1975), Capitalism It records, over some seven and a half years, the the Making of Citizenship & Colonialism in Mozambique: a Study almost daily choices made in respect Helena Gonçalves da Silva a Personal Record of Quelimane District (with Leroy Vail, of poetic form (choice of line-length, stanza, Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires 1980), Oral Poetry from Africa (with Jack type of rhyme), grammar (phrase and sentence Inês Espada Vieira Mapanje, 1983), Magomero: Portrait of structure, navigating the differences an African Village (1987), Power & the História da separação dos Países between Portuguese and English syntax), Baixos unidos face ao governo Praise Poem (with Leroy Vail, 1992), and vocabulary (the diction appropriate espanhol de Friedrich Schiller and Bridging the Zambesi: a Colonial for Camões’s huge variety of styles). Teresa Rodrigues Cadete [org.] Landeg White Folly (1993). The account makes few theoretical claims. He has also published eight collections But it reflects continually on the linguistic Intelectuais, Modernidade of poetry, viz., For Captain Stedman e Memória dimensions of the problems faced, in a manner (1983), The View from the Stockade Inês Espada Vieira that should engage theorists in the effort (1991), Bounty (1993). South (1999), to bring together translation theory Os Media e as Eleições Europeias, Traveller’s Palm (2002), Where the and translation practice. Legislativas e Autárquicas de 2009 Angolans are Playing Football: Selected It records, too, what was in essence a labour Rita Figueiras & New Poems (2003), Arab Work (2006), of love. Connolly continues, ‘love for the poet’s and Singing Bass (2009) along with Qual o tempo e o movimento work together with some degree of inspiration a novel Livingstone’s Funeral (2010). de uma elipse? are important factors usually missing from Estudos sobre Aby M. Warburg His verse translation of The Lusíads models and theories of poetry translation’. [org.] Anabela Mendes | Isabel Matos Dias of Luis Vaz de Camões (1997) won They are found here in abundance. José M. Justo | Peter Hanenberg the TLS translation prize for 1998. His verse translation of The Collected Lyric Poems of Luís de Camões appeared in 2008. Universidade Católica Editora (see www. landegwhite.com) 12.214 ECC Translating Camões2.indd 1 12/11/21 10:29 Translating Camões: a Personal Record Catalogação recomendada WHITE, Landeg Translating Camões : a personal record / Landeg White. – Lisboa : Universidade Cató- lica Editora, 2012. – 152 p. ; 23 cm ( Estudos comunicação e cultura. Translating Europe across the ages ) ISBN 978-972-54-0370-9 I – Tít. II – Col. CDU 869.0 Camões:82.03 Este trabalho é financiado por Fundos Nacionais da FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia no âmbito do projeto PEst-OE/ELT/UIO126/2011 Edição: Universidade Católica Editora, Unipessoal, Lda. Revisão editorial: Helena Romão Capa: OMLET design Composição, impressão e acabamento: Europress, Lda. Data: Novembro 2012 Depósito Legal: 350711/12 ISBN: 978-972-54-0370-9 Universidade Católica Editora Palma de Cima – 1649-023 Lisboa tel. (351) 217 214 020 fax (351) 217 214 029 [email protected] www.uceditora.ucp.pt Imagem da Capa: antónio bandeira araújo Translating Camões: a Personal Record Landeg White Universidade Católica Editora Índice Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 The Biblioteca Nacional 15 The Opening Stanzas 23 A Translation Journal 51 Publishing The Lusíads 79 The Biblioteca Nacional (2) 93 Translating Camões’s Lyrics 99 Publishing the Lyrics 131 Bibliography 145 Acknowledgements It was during a visit to the Universidade do Minho in Braga in 1984 that I first met the late Professor Hélio Osvaldo Alves. He was a man of such professional and personal generosity, it was impossible not to warm to him and we swiftly became friends. It was he translated the selection of my poems Superfícies e interiores, published by CEMAR in 1995, and when my version of The Lusíads appeared two years later, it was duly prefaced by thanks for the encouragement and intellectual stimulus he had provided. When, shortly before his untimely death in January 2003, I sent him the first of my attempts at Camões’s lyrics in English (Aquela Captiva), he replied he had read it with tears in his eyes. His spirit presided over the years of work that followed. With this in mind, readers will appreciate what a pleasure it was to ac- knowledge a complementary debt in my preface to The Collected Lyric Poems of Luís de Camões, to Professor Hélio J.S. Alves of the Universidade de Évo- ra. Hélio shares his father’s critical rigour and unfailing kindness, and he has brought both to bear on this present volume. As is noted on page 47, the relation between scholar and poet-translator has often been fraught, but I have benefitted in more ways than can be listed here from the erudi- tion and sheer inspiration of his commentaries. My friend and former colleague at Universidade Aberta, Professor Gerald Bär, is fond of proposing various works to me over bottles of wine. Both the wine and the proposals are appreciated, and this one clicked. I am grateful for the meticulous attention he brings to all manuscripts, including the various versions of this one. What errors remain, of fact or interpretation, are of course my own responsibility. Introduction In 1998, Edwin Gentzler and David Connolly, both experienced liter- ary translators, contributed parallel essays to the comprehensive and au- thoritative Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Bak- er.1 The respective titles, ‘Poetics of translation’ and ‘Poetry translation’ indicate a division of labour between theory and practice. While both in- voke Roman Jakobson (on the untranslatability of poetry), there is a cer- tain irony about the theorists trying to map out strategies of poetic transla- tion while the practitioners, ignoring all precept, happily declare with William Trask, ‘Impossible? Of course, that’s why I do it.’ One of the difficulties about theorising literary translation is that lin- guistics as a discipline came very late to the discussion of metaphor, and linguistic discussion of poetry is so often plodding and wooden. When Gentzler writes ‘Some (scholars) argue convincingly that poetic aspects such as intonation, alliteration, metaphor, rhythm, parody and pun inhere in all translation’, the poet in me wants to protest at the confusion of cate- gories (these strange things that apparently go on in poetry) while pointing out that he is using several devices himself: there is rhyme (not mentioned) in the phrase ‘intonation, alliteration’ building to that final ‘translation’, assonance (also not mentioned) in ‘metaphor, rhythm’, alliteration in ‘parody and pun’, while ‘inhere’ is an unexamined (legal) metaphor, and the whole sentence is built on a pattern of triple rhythms. By his own standards, he is writing bad poetry, bad because he seems unconscious of the fact and is hence not in control. Connolly comments that ‘translators … rarely keep notes about the process of translation or any record of the choices made in the process,’ adding ‘it is precisely insights into this process that are missing from most theoretical models.’ This short book, which is a personal record of my ex- perience of translating first Camões’s epic poem The Lusíads, then secondly his Collected Lyric Poems, has no pretensions to close this gap between trans- lation theory and translation practice, and it makes few theoretical claims. But it does reflect continually on the linguistic dimensions of the practical problems I faced, in a manner that should interest theorists. To take just one instance, described towards the end of section 3, I experienced the 1 Baker 1998, 167-170 and 170-176. 10 Introduction greatest difficulty in translating canto 10, stanzas 10 – 73, where Vasco da Gama is granted a vision of future Portuguese conquests in the Indian Ocean and China Seas. My first thought was I had glimpsed the end of my task too soon, and schooled myself to be patient. My second was that the long passage describes colonial victories, which are not much to my taste. It took me some time to realise that my problem lay in the fact that the English language lacks a future tense, and that the forms for expressing future states in English involve auxiliaries (‘will’, ‘going to’) which can also double as lexical verbs. Given that poetry abhors redundant words, the management of these auxiliaries was not easy.
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