| It is still impossible to evaluate good rock poets in Russian translation There are very few translations of rock poetry (more precisely, I would talk about Western song poetry in order to outline the potential consumer). There are even fewer published in a non-amateur way. And I’m afraid there are no good translations at all.
The second book in Nick Cave's collection of works, King Ink, was recently published. The first part appeared last year and contained mainly prose texts. The new issue contains poems and song lyrics. The design of both books is so successful that just looking at the shiny covers makes your hand reach for your wallet. Newspaper print does not convey this strict style (brilliant “wet” roll, letters and Cave’s face against an intense background). But a wonderfully designed book is good only as a symbol. A symbol of the attitude of our publishers to song poetry, or more precisely, to poetry that spreads through songs, since poetry is either poetry or it is not.
It is known from hearsay that “Cave has very scary lyrics... they are about God, the devil and love with murder.” This is awe-inspiring, although similar themes are found in almost any rock band, be it punks or metalheads. Nevertheless, Nick Cave has a special reputation in the West - the reputation of a good, original lyricist, and even a real poet.
What is happening with us so far? The translation of Western song poets is mainly undertaken not by poets and translators, but by fans. That is, people are competent, but in a slightly different area. Translating song lyrics is not an easy task, and you have to think about whether it’s worth citing all the vocalizations and transliterating all the “la-la-la”? I read both of Cave's books carefully and not without pleasure. There are, of course, successes: something that is translated accurately, reads well, and really sounds like a song in the ears (it seems to me that this is not an absolute, but useful criterion for the quality of a translated song). Among the pleasant reads, for example, “From Her into Oblivion.” In my opinion, Ilya Markin’s successful find, From Her To Eternity instead of the biblical From here to eternity, that is, “now and forever,” or, as the Orthodox say, “both now and ever.” The hit Wheeping Song (“Crying Song” by Ilya Kormiltsev) is very good, “People Ain’t No Good” (Elena Weird) and “Are You the One I’m Waiting for?” are beautiful. (Are You the One I'm Waiting For, Mikhail Gunin).
But a fair share of them are bad translations, bad Russian language, approximateness and misunderstanding of the meaning of the text. Unfortunately, Cave's most famous song fell victim to a very strange translation transformation. Alesya Mankovskaya, who took on the ballad hit Where The Wild Roses Grow, got off to a good start. In her “Where the Rosehip Grows”, the meter, rhyme and meaning are preserved in the chorus (i.e. the first stanza). But already on the last lines of the second stanza (that is, the first verse), losses begin: “... her lips / Are like rose hips to scarlet flowers.” It seems like wow, but compared to the original it is too neutral, and a lot of things fell out, including the definition of these very flowers that “grew down the river” and were “bloody and wild” (“For her lips were the color of the roses /They grew down the river, all bloody and wild"). Agree, this gives the whole story brightness and poignancy, and also hints at a bloody outcome of events. The four further stanzas are a fragile balance, but in the fifth something happens to the translation: “And on the third day we went together/among the roses for a walk on the river/before my death I only managed to see/that he was squeezing a stone in his hand with a smile.” The style of pioneer camp horror stories, but there is something more significant. Firstly, why such a sudden death? Stroke? Or the translation is intended for people who watched the video with Cave and Minogue and simply know “how it ended,” so they are not surprised by the second absurdity: first the heroine dies, and only then a stone appears in the killer’s hand. Nick Cave's lyrics are simple, elegant and logical: “And the last thing I heard was a muttered word/As he stood smiling above me with a rock in his fist” (that is, “the last thing I heard was a muttered word. ..he stood over me with a stone in his fist"). Secondly, in the third line of the last verse, one phrase of the hero is in quotation marks, the other, on the contrary, is given without quotation marks: “I whispered goodbye. Let beauty die! In the original, not only is it more coherent, but the quotation marks are in the wrong places: “I kissed her goodbye/I said 'all beauty must die’.” I am, of course, familiar with the concept of “translation transformation,” but here this change of place shows that the translator did not catch that the events of the last two paragraphs are happening at the same time. The heroine heard a “muttered word”, that is, nothing more than “all beauty must die” (“beauty must die”). None of the characters said a word about how exactly the murder happened, but the reader nevertheless understands that everything happened in one second. And the most offensive thing is that the metaphor disappeared from the last verse for some unknown reason: “the wind light as a thief” (“the wind is light as a thief”). Actually, this is exactly what distinguishes “just a text writer” from “a poet in general.”
How pleased Russian-speaking Cave lovers would probably be if they finally received not the caricatured image of a gloomy, unkempt Australian drunkard, but the poems of a good poet. And also many other poets - Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, John Cale, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Morrissey, Mike Stipe and even younger and “angry” Damon Albarn, Brett Anderson, Natalie Merchant or Tori Amos. And, by the way, the benefits of such work will even be utilitarian. Firstly, graphomaniac text writers will feel uncomfortable, and secondly, the skill of re-interpreting pop, pop and rock and roll songs will come in handy when, say, staging Western musicals in Russian. Alexander BELYAEV |
|
