In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Swearing by the Cuckoo:Translators on Translating Emily Dickinson's Poetry
  • Margaret H. Freeman (bio), Gudrun M. Grabher (bio), and Roland Hagenbüchle (bio)

The Robin's my Criterion for Tune—Because I grow—where Robins do—But, were I Cuckoo born—I'd swear by him—

(P285, lines 1-4)

The cuckoo is a European bird. Emily Dickinson never heard its call, though she might have encountered a transliteration in song. The English robin she would not have recognized, the American robin being a member of the thrush family, a different species altogether. These two themes—nonexistence (cuckoo) and difference (robin)—sound throughout this collection of essays on the challenges of translating Emily Dickinson's poetry into other languages and cultures.

This special issue of The Emily Dickinson Journal arose from a meeting of translators at the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) conference, "Translating Emily Dickinson in Language, Culture, and the Arts," held in Washington, D. C. in 1992. At this first EDIS conference, "translation" was understood not only as a way of transforming Dickinson into other languages but also into other cultures and other arts, and was explored in six poems chosen for special focus.

Understanding Dickinson's poetry presents a challenge for any reader; understanding the choices translators actually make in rendering Dickinson's poetry into other languages illuminates the principles of poetics and the possibilities of meaning inherent in Dickinson's original texts. This special issue thus brings together poets, translators, and theorists of translation [End Page 1] as they discuss the cultural, etymological, conceptual, metaphorical, and philosophical challenges of translating a poet like Dickinson into other languages.

The two essays in Part I set the stage by discussing the different theories and methodologies of translating poetry. Armin Paul Frank presents an overall picture of the issues involved in the general practice of translating from one language into another. Roland Hagenbüchle discusses these issues in the particular context of translating Dickinson. The essays in Parts II and III echo many of the points made in these two introductory essays as Dickinson translators discuss the actual processes and practices they adopted in translating Dickinson's poems.

In the translation workshop at the EDIS conference, some of the translators represented in this volume agreed to try their hand at translating an additional poem that would be selected and to share their experiences of the challenges the poem presented. The poem chosen by the editors of this special issue was "There's a certain Slant of light." This constitutes Part II. Essays on translating the six conference poems into other languages appear in Part III. Included as an introduction to Part III is a sample of Cynthia L. Hallen's Lexicon Project as it illuminates the vocabulary of the first of the six conference poems.

No attempt has been made to include "representative" languages; rather, the essays in this collection reflect the concerns and interests of some active Dickinson scholars and translators who have been participating in the project. The essays range in length and scope, including musings on the process of translation, analysis and discussion of particular problems in language or culture, comments on other translators' work, and interpretations of the poems themselves. Thus the essays speak to readers of the languages of the translations as well as to those who are not familiar with them. When two translators attempt the same poem in the same language (as happens, for example, with Portuguese for P341 and Japanese for P285), readers will be able to compare the translators' approaches and their translations.

So far as we know, such a collection of essays on translating an individual author is unique. Although there have been many articles and books on the theory and craft of translation, no such focus has ever before been attempted. We hope that this special issue will serve both as a model and as a resource for Dickinson scholars, students, readers, and translators in general. The collection as a whole gives a remarkable view into the cultures and languages in question; the translators' comments will, we are certain, enrich the understanding of all who read them. [End Page 2]

Margaret H. Freeman

Margaret H. Freeman is...

pdf

Share