A little while ago, on the Undernet #Poetry channel, I pulled up a translated haiku at random by my favourite Japanese poet, Kobayashi Issa:

beautiful, seen through holes
made in the paper screen
the Milky Way

The poem really didn’t do much for me, to be honest (Issa was prolific, which has resulted in a number of gems, and a great mess of mediocrity), and I wouldn’t have given it another thought, had Japi not seen fit to comment on it. I don’t remember Japi’s exact words, but he said something to the effect that it seemed strange to read a poem from a (likely lactose-intolerant) nineteenth century Japanese poet using the Western-sounding term ‘Milky Way’. This inspired me to wander over to Professor David Lanoue’s depot for all things Issa: The Haiku of Kobayashi Issa Website. A little seeking turned up the original Japanese:

うつくしやしょうじの穴の天の川

utsukushi ya shôji no ana no ama no kawa

and Lanoue’s appealing translation:

looking pretty
in a hole in the paper screen…
Heaven’s River

Lanoue identifies the poem as an autumnal piece from 1813, and also offers some commentary from Shinji Ogawa:

There are many haiku composed on the Milky Way. Most of them are of sublimity with grand scenery. Issa’s Milky Way, on the other hand, is in a hole in the paper screen, which is a symbol of poor living. Issa simply states, ‘It’s looking pretty,’ instead of self-pitying. I believe that Issa might regard not only the Milky Way but also the torn paper screen as pretty; to Issa everything is pretty as it is.”

(There’s that bit that I mentioned before about the frequent necessity, or at least utilility, of semi-ethnographic explanation in translation.)

I brought Lanoue’s translation back to Japi, and we both enjoyed it more than the first translation. For me, it maintains the sometimes stoic light-heartedness that makes Issa so appealing and so human, but, by using the slightly foreign term, retains a nineteenth century Japanese flavour. It tastes like Issa, to me.

But I wouldn’t go so far as to characterise Lanoue’s as the better translation… What if imbuing Issa with context detracts from Issa’s intentions? Certainly, his contemporary readers wouldn’t have said to themselves, ‘Ah! There’s that flavour of Edo Japan I’ve been looking for!’ (Or would they? What do I know?) Maybe what Lanoue gives us distracts as much as it interests.

So which is the better translation? For me, that question is meaningless. Neither is categorically better, as they potentially set out to do different things, and both are fairly successful.

(An interesting note: Lanoue sees quite an active role for the reader and thus, presumably for the translator. From a personal e-mail, on this matter:

Just a footnote about “hole” vs. “holes”… As you probably know, Japanese doesn’t have a plural ending to mark its nouns. Therefore, poets leave to the impagination whether “ana” is one hole or many holes. Basho, in his famous “old pond” haiku, allows the reader to picture a single frog jumping in with a solitary “plop!”–or a group of frogs, jumping in one after another (plop! plop! plop!). Most translators prefer the former vision, but Susumu Takiguchi imagines multiple frogs hopping “merrily” into the old pond. I think that one of haiku’s strengths as a genre is the fact that it leaves so much unsaid, for the reader to imagine, especially in Japanese. Along with the poet, the reader becomes a co-creator of the haiku.

)

A final, interesting note. Neither English translator succeeded in doing (or sought to do, I think) what was achieved in this German effort:

Wie wunderschön doch
Im Loch der Tür aus Papier
Der Strom des Himmels !

5-7-5

This entry was posted on Sunday, 24 April 2005 at 17:02 and is filed under Translation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.