Frae Ither Tongues

Ken

Description

Not only has the period of the past seventy years been the richest for literary translation into Scots since the sixteenth century, but it can claim to be the richest in terms of the quantity of work and the range of languages and genres translated. This collection of essays, by translators and critics, represents the first extended analysis of the nature and practice of modern translation into Scots.

Bill Findlay: Editor’s Introduction

Part 1: Translators on Translating

1 Brian Holton: Wale a Leid an Wale a Warld: Shuihu Zhuan into Scots

2 William Neill: Translating Homer’s Odyssey

3 Stuart Hood: Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo into Scots

4 Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay: Translating Register in Michel Tremblay’s Québécois Drama

Part 2: Studies of Translations

5 Noël Peacock: Robert Kemp’s Translations of Molière

6 Randall Stevenson: Triumphant Tartuffification: Liz Lochhead’s Translation of Molière’s Tartuffe

7 David Kinloch: Edwin Morgan’s Cyrano de Bergerac

8 Stephen Mulrine: Mayakovsky and Morgan

9 Graham Tulloch: Robert Garioch’s Translations of George Buchanan’s Latin Tragedies

10 Christopher Whyte: Robert Garioch and Giuseppe Belli

11 J. Derrick McClure: The Puddocks and The Burdies ‘by Aristophanes and Douglas Young’

12 Peter Graves and Bjarne Thorup Thomsen: Translation and Transplantation: Sir Alexander Gray’s Danish Ballads

References

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Interpreting
• Translating
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• Lettres et linguistique
• Escocés (lengua germánica)
• Professional
• Postgraduate education
• Research
• Postgraduate
• Scots

Informations

• Publié par: Multilingual Matters
• Date de parution: 16 mars 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781853597015
• Langue: English

Extrait

Frae Ither Tongues

TOPICS IN TRANSLATION Series Editors:Susan Bassnett,University of Warwick, UKand Edwin Gentzler, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA Editor for Translation in the Commercial Environment: Geoffrey SamuelssonBrown,University of Surrey, UK

Other Books in the Series Annotated Texts for Translation: English  German Christina Schäffner with Uwe Wiesemann ‘Behind Inverted Commas’: Translation and AngloGerman Cultural Relations in the Nineteenth Century Susanne Stark Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere Contemporary Translation Theories (2nd Edition) Edwin Gentzler Culture Bumps: An Empirical Approach to the Translation of Allusions Ritva Leppihalme Literary Translation: A Practical Guide Clifford E. Landers Paragraphs on Translation Peter Newmark Practical Guide for Translators Geoffrey SamuelssonBrown The Coming Industry of Teletranslation Minako O’Hagan The Interpreter’s Resource Mary Phelan The Pragmatics of Translation Leo Hickey (ed.) The Rewriting of Njáls Saga: Translation, Ideology, and Icelandic Sagas Jón Karl Helgason Translation, Power, Subversion Román Alvarez and M. CarmenAfrica Vidal (eds) Translation and Nation: A Cultural Politics of Englishness Roger Ellis and Liz OakleyBrown (eds) Translationmediated Communication in a Digital World Minako O’Hagan and David Ashworth Time Sharing on Stage: Drama Translation in Theatre and Society Sirkku Aaltonen Words, Words, Words. The Translator and the Language Learner Gunilla Anderman and Margaret Rogers Written in the Language of the Scottish Nation John Corbett

Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingualmatters.com

TOPICS IN TRANSLATION 24 Series Editors: Susan Bassnett,University of Warwickand Edwin Gentzler,University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Frae Ither Tongues Essays on Modern Translations into Scots

Edited by Bill Findlay

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon  Buffalo  Toronto  Sydney

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Frae Ither Tongues: Essays on Modern Translations into Scots/edited by Bill Findlay. Topics in Translation: 24 Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Scots language–Translating. 2. Translating and interpreting–Scotland–History. 3. Literature–Translations into Scots–History and criticism. I. Findlay, Bill. II. Series. PE2103.F73 2004 491.6'3802–dc22 2003017735

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1853597007 (hbk)

Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Australia: Footprint Books, PO Box 418, Church Point, NSW 2103, Australia.

Copyright © 2004 Bill Findlay and the authors of individual chapters.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset by Wordworks Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd.

For my guid freend and collaborator frae Québécois intil Scots

MARTIN BOWMAN

an Angus Pict in farawa Canada and (quo his Monikie mither, Jean Scott) an aftimes gwamish moudiewort

‘If Scots is to be something worth the keeping, then […] we should be able to take the biggest of books and stretch the tongue beyond what we think it can do, make the tongue new by including things we’d never before have dreamt of saying in Scots, to build the language we lack out of the otherness of a different tongue.’ (Brian Holton,infra)

‘[A]t times when states are anxious to establish their national identity and to prove the virtues of their language, they have very often in history indulged in widespread translation from other cultures; yet in the process of doing this they subtly alter their own language, joining it in many unforeseen ways to a greater continent of almost undefined and nonspecific human expression. Whether one would take this as far as George Steiner does inAfter Babelwhen he calls translation “a teleological imperative” in the search for an eventual linguistic unity […], it is probably true that the translator must come to a very peculiar awareness of the way in which the quest for the most native will turn out to draw him into the most universal. He pauses in an astounding landscape, almost afraid to move. When he moves, he is no longer himself. And that is it.’ (Edwin Morgan, [1976] repr. in 1990b: 234–5)

Contents

Editor’s Introduction Bill Findlay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

Part 1: Translators on Translating

1

2

3

4

Wale a Leid an Wale a Warld:Shuihu Zhuaninto Scots Brian Holton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Translating Homer’sOdyssey William Neill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Dario Fo’sMistero Buffointo Scots Stuart Hood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Translating Register in Michel Tremblay’s Québécois Drama Martin Bowman and Bill Findlay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

Part 2: Studies of Translations

5

6

7

8

Robert Kemp’s Translations of Molière Noël Peacock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 Triumphant Tartuffification: Liz Lochhead’s Translation of Molière’sTartuffe Randall Stevenson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 Edwin Morgan’sCyrano de Bergerac David Kinloch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123 Mayakovsky and Morgan Stephen Mulrine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145

vii

viii

Frae Ither Tongues

9 Robert Garioch’s Translations of George Buchanan’s Latin Tragedies Graham Tulloch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171 10 Robert Garioch and Giuseppe Belli Christopher Whyte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188 11The PuddocksandThe Burdies‘by Aristophanes and Douglas Young’ J. Derrick McClure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215 12 Translation and Transplantation: Sir Alexander Gray’s Danish Ballads Peter Graves and Bjarne Thorup Thomsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

Editor’s Introduction

BILL FINDLAY

Although this collection of essays was conceived independently, it can be seen as complementary to an earlier volume in the ‘Topics in Translation’ series, John Corbett’sWritten in the Language of the Scottish Nation: A History of Literary Translation into Scots(1999). Both books are firsts: Corbett’s book is a pioneering account of Scots translation from the fifteenth to the twen- tieth century, and the essays gathered here together represent the first extensive analysis of writers’ use of Scots as a translation medium in the 1 modern (or any ) era. Both books, too, share being stimulated into life by the extraordinary output of translators into Scots over the past half-century or so. That this has been a period unprecedented in the history of Scots- language writing in the quantity of work and the range of languages and genres translated, and in translators’ sustained exploration of the creative resources of Scots as a target medium, will be expanded on below; but some historical and cultural context to the selected translations discussed should first be offered. While John Corbett’s comprehensive survey supplies that in detail, a brief summary (drawing on Findlay, 2000a: 36–8) may be helpful for readers here. * * * * * In common with its literary tradition, Scotland’s literary translation heri- tage is multilingual, featuring translations into Gaelic, Scots, English and, in the past, Latin. Although Gaelic translation has continued to feature in the modern period, as exemplified by John Maclean’sOdusseia Homair (Mac Gilleathain, 1976), discussed in William Neill’s essay in this volume, translations into Scots and English predominate in quantity. Of the two, translation into Scots has a longer history, reflecting the Scots language’s 2 older lineage in Scotland (Gaelic, of course, is oldest of all). Whilst Scots has a sustained literary history stretching back to about 1300, literary translation has been practised more fitfully. The two periods of most significance are the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The sixteenth century saw Scots secure as a national language, with demotic to courtly and literary registers, and with a literature boasting poets of the stature of William

1

2

Frae Ither Tongues

Dunbar, Robert Henryson and Sir David Lindsay. The maturity of the language is evident in the translation of Virgil’sAeneid(1513) by Gavin Douglas (Coldwell, 1957–1964). Douglas firmly states in a Prologue that his translation is ‘Writtin in the langage of Scottis natioun’. This national asser- tiveness through language can be identified with a Renaissance and Europe- wide mood of translating classics into national vernaculars as both a culturo- patriotic act of linguistic independence and a means of making available to a wider readership the works of classical antiquity. The sixteenth century saw other Scots translations, including translations of Latin prose works by Livy (History of Rome) and Boece (The History and Chronicles of Scotland), the entire New Testament and parts of the Old Testament, and a Latincomoedia (Pamphilus speakand of Lufe). In the last two decades of the sixteenth century, the poet-king James VI brought together his ‘Castalian Band’ of court poets. There is a connection with the motivation behind Gavin Douglas’s work earlier in the century, in that James, taking as his model what the Pléiade poets had achieved for French in the 1550s and 1560s, promoted the writing and translationof poetry as a means of advancing the literary status of Scots. The King himself translated Salluste Du Bartas’sUranie,and encouraged court writers to translate, for example, Ariosto’sOrlando Furioso,Petrarch’s Trionfi,and Machiavelli’sIl Principe. He also had other members of his poet band produce versions of Ronsard and poets of the Pléiade. With King James’s accession to the English throne in 1603 and the depar- ture of the Scottish court to London, the Castalian Band of poets dispersed. Royal patronage of and commitment to an independent Scots tradition in literature and translation departed with James. Nonetheless, the Scots literary tradition flowed on, reaching high points in the poetry of Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns in the eighteenth century, and in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, John Galt, James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson in the nineteenth century. But translations into Scots were scant: some classical Latin verse in the eighteenth century, some Scandinavian folk poetry and songs and parts of the Bible in the nineteenth century (see Corbett, 1999: 100–25). * * * * * The catalyst for the twentieth-century revival of literary translation into Scots was the ‘Scottish Renaissance Movement’ (so named by the French critic Denis Saurat) which began in the 1920s. The moving force was the poet and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid. MacDiarmid argued for the revitalisation of Scots as a literary language, and in his own work he devel- oped a ‘synthetic Scots’ medium that borrowed from earlier literature, reference works and dictionaries. It was an approach that looked back to