Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Károly Szokolay: The problems of translating poetry

However, it is very important that poets translate poetry, even though with the help of rough translations. Lev Ozerov asks in the title of one of his essays, "Are translators born?" It reminds us of the Roman saying: "Poéta nascitur non fit." (Poets are born, not made). Ozerov raises here a very logical series of questions: "Are translators born? Where does a translator begin? When he falls in love with the original? How does love for the original begin? With a sense of discovery? And what breeds with a sense of discovery?"

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8 I think these questions are very important. But who can answer them? As for the training of translators, which is Ozerov's main topic in his essays, I am sceptical about it. Perhaps translators of prose and drama can be trained, but translators of poetry? I cannot believe it. The general result of creating verse translations by non-poets is that the poems are flat, dead and uninteresting. It does not matter whether the non-poet translator is English, Hungarian, Russian or whatever. Only a poet can feel the colour that words receive from their neighbours, the slightly new meaning, the range of sound effects, the music of poetry, and the tone and feeling of the poem, which is the most important thing, even if it is almost undefinable. As for the traditions of translation in the major nations, perhaps the Germans have achieved the most. They had already started translating French and English drama (first of all Shakespeare and, in addition, in blank verse) at the end of the 18

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h century. Not only the older tradition of the art of translation into German succeeds, but the attitude of the German language to follow several different foreign metrical forms. While in English poetry the iambic forms rule, in German literature we can find several different metrical forms. Most classical metres are quite natural in German, just as in Hungarian. Here is one example from Friedrich Hölderlin: Aber wir, zufrieden gesellt, wie die liebenden Schwäne, Wenn sie ruhen am See, oder auf Wellen gewiegt, Niedersehn in die Wasser, wo silberne Wolken sich spiegeln, Und ätherisches Blau unter dem Schiffenden wallt. The same lines in Hungarian: Úgy éltünk, akár a szerelmes hattyúk a fényben, csöndesen úszkálnak, ringnak a fodrokon át, s nézik a tó tükörében az ezüst felhők vonulását, míg hűvös éteri kék fodroz a testük alatt. (Translated by Miklós Radnóti) 133