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The use of translation to teach poetic craft is an old (and open) secret.
Across the centuries, great poets from Petrarch and John Dryden to Elizabeth
Bishop and Octavio Paz have wrestled poems from one language into another,
absorbing the rhythms, styles, and themes of poets far removed from their
own languages and times. In a way, translation demands the deepest possible
immersion in a work of literature. To produce a successful translation,
poets must achieve a strong understanding of the meaning, music, and form of
the original poem. But the rewards of such a process can be soul-shifting.
As John Felstiner, author of Translating Neruda: The Way to Machu Picchu,
says, "Translation allows the translator to walk to the edge of a work and
gaze into the abyss."
Poetry Inside Out (PIO) is the first in-school imaginative writing program
in which translation plays an essential part. PIO targets the strength of
Spanish bilingual students — their budding multilingualism, which some
educators would identify as a roadblock — and enables them to become
literate in the fullest sense of the word.
A typical PIO session begins with passing out a page of great poetry in
Spanish. As the students read aloud, the instructor makes casual
interpretive comments about what the poems mean to him. "I like this idea,
in Elías Nandino's poem, of the sun riding on a camel made of cotton, but
I'm not sure what that cotton camel could be. Can anyone tell me?" And
someone is sure to glimpse the mystery: "A cloud!"
Over the course of the residency, as students translate the renowned poetry
they encounter, the instructor encourages them to consider two cardinal
questions of the translator: "Does it mean the same thing?" and "Does it
sound good?" As students read their translations aloud, pooling knowledge of
English with their peers (who may possess varying degrees of English
proficiency), look up key words in a dictionary, and engage in discussion
that is often surprisingly sophisticated, a complex learning dance ensues
between adult and child language, dictionary and memory, first language and
second language, and Latin American and North American culture.
The children go on to compose their own poetry based on their deep immersion
in these model poems. Across a long-term residency of fifteen to twenty-five
sessions, the practices of translation and original composition inform and
reinforce one another in the literary culture of each classroom.
The use of literary translation to teach bilingual students is a natural
choice because these students are playfully and authentically engaged with
language, and they understand the practical value of their bilingualism,
having served often as informal interpreters for their families and
communities. As we put these students' unique resources to work in the art
and craft of poetic language and translation, they begin to see themselves
as participants in the world of Spanish and English-language literature.
They also practice many core skills, including dictionary use, cooperative
work, reading and speaking fluency, negotiating the nuances of correct
syntax and the conventions of writing style in both languages. Classroom
teachers who may have felt hesitant about teaching poetry and translation
gain confidence.
Very early in every residency we emphasize the concept of the poetic line.
We begin by writing our poetic examples in lines on the whiteboard or on
butcher paper. It makes sense to children to explain that the reader's eye
moves down the page taking in one unit of sense or imagery at a time. In
fact, a skinny poem, such as Pablo Neruda's Odes, is easier to read than it
would be written in paragraph form. Soon many of them are making their own
decisions as to where to break the lines rather than writing all the way
across the page. Developmentally, very few second-graders seem to master
this notion; eager and advanced third-graders often get it, while by fourth
grade it is widely accessible. Once students have mastered the notion of the
line, we begin to think in terms of stanzas. Many of the poems that we
translate use a regular number of lines in each stanza. Both line and stanza
are important in helping students organize their thoughts and images.
The best poetry at any age is born out of a certain tension between the
flight of the unchained imagination and the solid framework of a creative
structure. One traditional form that has been very popular with our students
is the pantoum, of Malaysian origin, repeating whole lines in the pattern
ABCD BEDF EGFH GCHA. Another form which may be just at the limit of the best
capabilities of this age-group is the sonnet, a fourteen-line poem with
various traditional rhyme-schemes which has been widely practiced in every
Western language since the Renaissance.
—John Oliver Simon
Artistic Director, Poetry Inside Out
Center for the Art of Translation
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