Poetry Translating as Expert Action Processes, priorities and networks

Chapter 6. Translating rhyme and rhythm 

Cry

1 How do I know there are woods here when all that is here is night,

2 so much that darkness has brimlled the empty sockets of sight

3 as deep as memory, prisoner prising at walls to see.

4 Are my ngers brushing at trees or is darkness touching me?

5 And how do I know in the woods that what just shrieked was a bird,

6 when all I can hear is silence, sound inside-out, the unheard,

7 when even the hiss of my breath is stillness, pitch-black and mute,

8 a deadening coal-dust that numbs my vocal chords to their root?

9 at shriek now a bird’s – was it wrenched out of dreaming by the dark?

10 Or did love cry out, or abduction? Whatever – nothing’s there.

11 Between the beats of my heart-clock, what drags me down, in what arc?

12 And how must this blindman, my sight, focus the sun through his eye?

13 Darkness and silence my judge and my witness – but would they swear?

14 How must I outdeafen the silence before that stilldead cry?

Figure 44. Krik: English version after Draft 3

1 How do I know there are woods when here there is nothing but night,

2 so much that darkness has lled the empty sockets of sight

3 to memory’s depths, prisoner prising sightwalls to see.

4 Are my ngers brushing at trees or is darkness touching me?

5 How do I know that the cry which shrieked in these woods was a bird,

6 when all I can hear is silence, sound inside-out, the unheard,

7 when even the hiss of my breath is stillness, pitch-black and mute,

8 a muing coal-dust that numbs my vocal chords to their root?

9 at cry now a bird’s – what wrenched it from dreaming, was it the dark?

10 Or a shriek of love, or of reiving? Nothing lies thick all around.

11 Between the beats of my heart-clock, what drags me down, in what arc?

12 How can my blindsight see where the sun will focus its eye?

13 Shall I summon stillness and dark as witnesses to that sound?

14 How can I deafen the silence le by that deadened cry?

Figure 45. Krik/Cry: Published English version

6.2.2 Generalizability

This chapter compares my Toen wij against my Krik data. In most areas analyzed

in Chapter 5, I and the other Toen wij translators worked very similarly. In these

areas, therefore, it can cautiously be assumed that the other translators would react