Presentation Assignment

Andriana Rizos
ENG 757
2/17/10



Objectives:
• Classmates will compare lyrics of an American song that was used by a Greek band as they list the similarities and differences after watching the video.
• Classmates will interpret quotes by Clifford Landers, and listen to his analogy as they literally put it to use.
• Classmates will rearrange the English (original) lyrics to see how many variations we get that all mean the same thing to portray the freight train analogy by using it as a model.

Clifford Landers explains in Literary Translation: A Practical Guide, "how one says something can be as important, sometimes more important, than what one says" (pg. 7). Often, that is what we remember the most as well; we may remember that a relative was harshly blunt in the way they revealed a misfortunate event, but not the exact words the relative used. This is because emotions is what really goes deep into us, not the words. It is the words that create those emotions, therefore we must maneuver them carefully so as to elicit emotional responses from our readers. The first time I heard that Nickelback song, "How You Remind Me," I remember liking the music, beat, rhythm, melody, and lyrics. Then, when I heard the Greek version of it, I was amazed and thrilled to hear it in another language. As soon as the lyrics came into play, I felt betrayed when I realized the Greek lyrics had nothing to do with the English.
In Landers' freight train analogy, he explains that in a technical translation, "the order of cars is inconsequential if all the cargo arrives intact" (pg. 7). The cargo is the meaning portrayed by the words that exist in these cars. This did not arrive in the Greek song, leaving me disappointed. Although it is perfectly okay to mix up the words as well as the placements of lines, this song didn't even try. In a literary translation, "the order of the cars - which is to say the style - can make the difference between a lively, highly readable translation and a stilted, rigid, and artificial rendering that strips the original of its artistic and aesthetic essence, even its very soul" (pg. 7). When we try to stick so close to the original source text, the target language fails to encompass the initial beauty so we must stray into what we know is the beauty of the target language. Both meaning and style are very important, therefore we need to compromise both to get to our final product.
As we will see in our freight-train exercise, we can rewrite a line from one language into that same language in many ways, yet still keep the meaning alive. The only difference would be in sound and aesthetics. "All these semantically interchangeable sentences convey the same information but differ significantly in aesthetic effect. Each is defensible, and each would have its defenders, but the literary translator must make a choice, and from a succession of such choices emerges the final product" (pg. 9). Since the Greek version of the song did not attempt to take the meaning of the English original, yet the melody, rhythm, and feel of the song as well as its video remained the same, the freight train arrived without its cargo. In other words, this was a failed translation. In poetry, for example, we must wonder when form becomes necessary to abandon in order to keep meaning alive. We must ask ourselves as translators, what is more important? The arrival of a freight train, or the arrival of its cargo? The form, or the content? Only from there, can we start to work at a compromise by playing with syntax and language to perhaps create new images or rhymes that could convey the initial meaning that was intended.
I feel this is the biggest struggle for a translator, and one with no real answer as to whether or not the problem could be solved. It's a matter of compromise between the literal and technical translations from the source text to the target language.