Eiko Yachimoto
- What can I say on translating haiku?
Born
in Yokosuka, Japan, on February 14, 1947, Eiko
Yachimoto graduated from Sophia University
in Tokyo (with a Russian language major
and a minor in political science). She also graduated
from the University of Minnesota, earning a
2nd BA in English language and literature in
1982. She works as a writer, translator and/or
a language teacher--sometimes employed, sometimes
as a free-lancer. She has been Vice President
of the Association for International Renku
since
2000. She is married, and is the mother of a 17 year old girl. She has lived
in Yokohama, Sasebo, and Minneapolis, and now lives in Yokosuka.
I
have heard those stories in Bulgarian, but
know them in German. Let
me talk about this mysterious translation.
Over 60 years I have nurtured myself with my
infant experiences in Rusctschuk (or Ruse,
Bulgaria) and yet vast majority of my memories
are tied to the language I did not know in
those days. I do Not feel that I am warping
or bending my memories by using German. I usually
avoid *translation like the plague, a word
that has become meaningless from overuse. Yet
this translation was not like usual text translation,
it has been done unconsciously over unconscious
time frame and it went natural, or on its own
accord inside me...
--from ‘The
Tongue Set Free ‘
by Elias Canetti
I
have been asked to translate haiku on a number
of occasions. Sometimes I complied,
other times I refrained. There certainly exists
a chunk of ambiguity in me as to the act of translating
other poets’ haiku into another language.
*translation software vs
haiku*
In today’s world there is a thing called translation software. The first
time I heard ‘machine translation’ was ages ago when I was a student
of the Russian language. Some students put the concept of automated machine
translation on a pedestal as a rosy dream for the world as one. I remember
having been disturbed by them instinctively. Now I see my old hesitance in
the light of reasoning. Why can’t the machine translate what is most
crucial of human language? Because the machine understands the language only
based on the past data that were fed to it, whereas people keep expanding the
inexhaustibility of language in each unique way as they live each day anew.
Yet, an increasing number of people are losing the feel towards the true organic
language... This tendency is parallel to the tendency of many dialects in all
parts of the world being now endangered into extinction... Alas, we seem to
be surrounded now by words without fresh and pulsing life.
Haiku exists at the extreme opposite-end
of such lifeless language. Before any haiku translation
I would make sure that I grasped and breathed
in that life from the particular haiku I would
work on. In this sense it makes sense that those
simultaneous interpreters who play such an important
role in international conferences are said to
avoid or dislike translating haiku. In their
usual function they start switching words without
waiting to hear the statement out to the last
. This method will work only as a Very rare exception
in haiku translation.
*translating
one’s
own haiku*
This will lead me to discuss all different levels of our language use. There
are all kinds of haiku, but great ones inevitably take us to a deeper consciousness
level--not as deep as the level where philosophical or religious convictions
occur, but deeper than the surface level of everyday communication. I would
argue that each translator should be capable of fathoming this level and
sharing the consciousness of the original poet before he starts converting
the first word of a haiku.
This process occurs even in the
same person. I, for one, had to wait a certain
period of time before translating my own haiku
into another language. Let me give you an example:
First I wrote in English:
the green shape
of sea-scented wind
rosemary
I knew that word by word translation
would kill both the life of this haiku and my
love of rosemary and the sea. Long after I had
given up translating this English language haiku,
one 5-7-5 possibility naturally came to my tongue:
shiokaze ni (5) (blown by the sea-scented
wind)
ro^zu mari^ no (7) (rosemary)
nobini keri (5) (has grown rather wildly! )
I guarantee that these two versions
share the same consciousness level where my poetry
and love of rosemary/sea exist, in spite of the
surface difference! And each satisfies the language-unique
sound-pleasantness and the image-order aesthetics..
*personal trust in haiku
translation*
Such surface difference as above is not usually allowed if one translates another
poet’s haiku. Here comes another point in haiku translation and that
is the personal trust between each haijin and his/her translator. One beautiful
example is to be found in ‘Infinity‘, a kushu by Ohba Kinuta,
a resident haijin of Sekiguchi Basho-an in Tokyo. I am impressed with this
bi-lingual kushu published in spring, 2002. By placing only one haiku on
a page, it was possible to print Japanese haiku in the vertical way in the
book that opens in the Western way. If two or more vertical haiku are placed
on a page, Japanese readers instinctively move their eyes across the page
from right to left and turn the page the opposite way, which causes awful
frustration when the book itself is constructed in the Western way for the
readability of the English text. Have you ever seen the English language
printed in the vertical way? I recently have! This stress taught me the importance
of writing Japanese haiku in its original vertical way so that each word
can reach, with its full and free-moving power, each reader. Most (not all)
bilingual books do not have as much love given to their construction and
end up being a cluttered mix lacking poetry in their existence. Mr. Ohba’s
translator is Prof. Aki Hirota of California State University, Northridge.
Mr. Ohba told me that they fostered their friendship over the years as she
visited Basho-an, with that old pond and nice foliage, while she worked occasionally
on a campus in Tokyo.
Inconspicuously
at the edge of transmigration--
Hot Pepper
hissorito (5)
rinne no hashi no(7)
to^garashi (5) Kinuta
You
may wonder what to do with a deceased haijin
whose work is worthy of translation.
Let me tell you a few recent episodes. First
with Hisajo, a pioneer of all following female
haijin, who died a tragic death in 1946, not
in war, but in a hospital bed behind iron bars.
She grew up away from traditional Japan, namely
in Okinawa and Taiwan as the daughter of a high-ranking
government official. As I learned her struggle
in her adult years of being herself and being
accepted, some of her haiku gradually started
to live in me. I have come to believe that Hisajo
has been misunderstood by ‘the traditional
Japan’ in its various masks, on a grand
scale. She was never mentally ill, but she had
to die there of hunger and coldness. For the
cause of redeeming this genius by excluding prevailing
prejudice, I now believed getting her haiku published
in English translation would be most effective.
The following are five of 30 haiku I volunteered
to translate for 'World Haiku Review.' This translation
project was triggered, so to speak, by another
kind of personal relationship. (I plan to translate
many more than 30).
skyward flapping of their wings
the power of one hundred cranes
in a screw-spiral
a leaf falls from the cliff
blitz speed
each draws closer
listening to rain on kudzu--
our umbrellas touch
enough of kana practice
I let the children shell broad beans
I grew up
bathing in the emerald sea
of everlasting summers
(*she was a happy golden girl)
*haiku translation as a
job*
There is a time when I have no room for ambiguity. I have to do it when it
is a job. Last year I was hired to help create The Catalogue for Haiga Exhibition
in Europe. Translating Edo period haiku was such a daunting responsibility,
especially knowing that my English text would be the base for various local
leaflets for the exhibition visitors who do not understand English. Getting
beautifully flowing calligraphy deciphered into readable text of kana and
kanji had been done by Mr. Collector--that alone took many years’ of
effort. My part started from appreciating each haiku written on each haiga.
Just after sending a batch of translated haiku to a printer, I happened to
see another translation of the same haiku done by another translator. My
blood froze (well, almost) at the discrepancy! After going through what little
reference material was available to me, I found that this Edo man, a haikai(renku)
master and a great nihonga artist in one, did write two versions on two different
occasions:
higashiyama (5)
totte kaeseya (7) (kaese)
hototogisu (5)
higashiyama (5)
totte kaesuya (7) (kaesu)
hototogisu (5)
With
*kaese, it becomes an imperative and with *kaesu,
it is a description of what
is happening. And the orientation of the bird’s
movement, whether it goes towards the mountain
or off the mountain is left ambiguous in both
versions. The translation that surprised me was:
Hurry back
To Higashiyama--
Cuckoo
This was based on *kaese, or Turn!
The translation I did based on
*kaesu was:
a cuckoo turns-
a half circle in the air
Higashiyama
I
admit I used my discretion. I wanted this haiku
to live as a poem in people’s
hearts. I wanted exhibition visitors to see the
image. How gentle, soft and round Mt. Higashiyama
in Kyoto looks is the key to this haiku. And
the parallel of the artist’s brush stroke
and the movement of the bird . . . The catalogue
project was quite challenging, and I learned
as if anew how difficult it is to translate a
haiku. In fact, I love one haiku of an Edo master
so dearly and yet I still can not find a matching
English poetic voice to this:
sakaya inete (6)
to^fuya inete (7)
sayoshigure (5)
our sake man has fallen asleep
our tofu man also fallen asleep
softly falling winter night rain
Once a translated haiku is sent
to the public, a translator must take cold criticism,
sharp comments, rigorous scrutiny and/or just
about anything (even admiration if one is lucky)
alone on herself. Yet, I sincerely hope ultimate
evaluation of the haiku translation will be done
by those who are poets themselves, in addition
to being versed in both languages.
*haiku vs bi-lingual renku
sessions*
I am one of few people who have
encountered haiku as a starting verse of renku,
the Japanese collaborative poetry of 1500 years'
tradition. The joy of writing a starting verse
led me to appreciate haiku also. Haiku actually
was the name given by Shiki to a starting verse
of renku, but most haijin of present-day Japan
do not practice renku. I have been a core member
of the Association for International Renku for
about 10 years now and have been constantly writing
bi-lingual renku in live sessions that are held
once every month.
When
there are those poets who are versed only in
one language, some of us have
to function as a renku-translator on the spot
so that our renku poem can keep on flowing. Unless
your translation is good enough, the originator
will catch the translator's liability right away,
because no good link will be coming in! I find
renku translation very rewarding each time two
poets of different languages shine in their contentment
of the true linkage between their verses. No
matter how subjective or idiosyncratic the act
of translation may seem to you, there Is a way
to prove its ‘literary objectivity’.
One example:
tallying at the register ......a
shy face Hirobumi Hatsuzawa
in the silence .....of an autumn mist..... trace of a moon
Patricia Donegan
Invisible like an artillery running
through our body, translation is there to make
this link possible. What the Japanese language
poet had in front of him was:
reji utsu hito no(7) shy na yokogao(7)
Hirobumi
shizukesani (5) shizumorishi tsuki(7)
kiri matou(5) Patricia
*in concluding...*
In concluding this short essay,
I would like to thank Mr. Robert Wilson
for giving me this chance of writing on the theme which has been on my mind
all these years. I strongly believe in his depth and broad-mindedness, and
I am very sure that his editorship will flourish in 'Simply Haiku'.
Congratulations on the new start!
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