Chapter 3. Poetry translation webs
[Amela Simić’s] version contains the following paragraph:
“Newspapers from around the world wrote about them. Italian dailies published
stories about the Bosnian Romeo and Juliet. French journalists wrote about a ro-
mantic love which surpassed political boundaries. Americans saw in them the
symbol of two nations on a divided bridge. And the British illustrated the absurd-
ity of war with their bodies. Only the Russians were silent. Then the photographs
of the dead lovers moved into peaceful Springs.”
The poem ends with “Spring winds” carrying the “stench” of the lovers’ bodies;
“No newspapers wrote about that.” In his adaptation, Harsent deliberately excludes
[Goran] Simić’s damning critique of Western nations’ [...] aestheticization of a war
story; no countries are named and the final sentence is dropped. (Wells 2005)Other quality judgements evaluated the translator’s receptor-language style
(including my own), almost always positively this time: e.g. “assured, colloquial”,
“exquisite”, “convincing” (K. Connolly 1998; Bertram 2005; Calder 2000). Two
negative comments criticized my use of archaisms in translations from Stone
Sleeper (Montefiore 1998; Calder ibid.) – here, stylistic loyalty to Dizdar’s own ar-
chaization appears overridden by modern English norms disfavouring literary ar-
chaization (cf. Jones and Turner 2004).
Finally, several reviewers discussed the relationship between translated and
Anglo poetry. With major poets like Dizdar and Abdulah Sidran, whose transla-
tions were only available outside Bosnia as selections in anthologies or journals,
reviewers (e.g. Schwartz 2004) advocated that book-length versions should be pub-
lished in Anglo countries. Wells (year unknown) deplored how Canada-resident
poet Goran Simić’s From Sarajevo with Sorrow (2005), as a translated work, could
not be considered for a Canadian literary prize. Similarly, Boyd (year unknown)
argued that Goran Simić and his Anglo peers actually held similar places in the
Canadian poetry-writing field. Finally, one reviewer contrasted the positive impact
of a translated anthology, Words Without Borders (Salierno Mason et al. 2007), with
the wider lack of translated literature in English – a lack which the reviewer, echoing
the anthology editor, saw as dangerous (cited on Powell’s Books, year unknown):
in a time when globalization is a fact of life, and only 6% of books in translation
are translated into English, there exists ‘fertile territory for misunderstanding, un-
resolved conflict, and yes, war. Luckily, this timely literary collection [...] brings
the world, freshly translated, to curious English speakers everywhere.3.4 Discussion: Poetry translation networks
This section discusses the study’s implications for how poetry translators act in an
interpersonal and intertextual context. Discussions start at project-team level,