Rhyming translations

[Madiel]

They drive me crazy. How do other people feel about them?

In all seriousness, I find them incredibly frustrating. I personally can't understand why people believe that if the original text is in rhyme, there's something helpful about making a translation rhyme as well. No. Please convey the actual meaning of the original. I can see that the original text rhymes, and most likely I can hear it as well.

I have different reactions depending on whether I know any of the original language, but in neither case is it positive. If I can read some of the original language myself, it really bugs me if I can see the sense has been changed a little, or even if the ideas aren't being presented in the right order. For music, order is crucial. If the composer put a musical climax on a particular word near the end of a sentence, it's just stupid to discover the translation puts the equivalent word near the beginning of the sentence instead.

If I don't know the original language, I end up worrying about how much nuance or meaning I'm missing because someone decided making a rhyming English text was a more important priority.

The one that's irritated me the most recently, and which I was just reminded of hence this little rant, was for Dvorak's The Spectre's Bride. I don't know Czech so I'm entirely reliant on the translator. Not only does the English rhyme, immediately making me doubt its faithfulness, but it doesn't use the same rhyming scheme as the Czech text! You'd think that if you were going to bother conveying rhyme, you'd feel it necessary to match the rhyming pattern, but no. The Czech text is AABB, the English text is ABCB. So it isn't even conveying that properly.

[Karl Henning]

When a rhyming translation I cannot stand,
I do my best not to become unmanned.

[Brian]

But I love the Falen/Oxford translation of Eugene Onegin

[Brian]

How do you feel about the English translation of Georges Perec's A Void, which, just like the original French text, does not contain the letter E?

[Karl Henning]

But I love the Falen/Oxford translation of Eugene Onegin

Hmm, I should have a look . . . .

[Jo498]

Translation of poetry is extremely difficult (as you certainly know). There are always compromises to be made with conserving as much as possible of the content and preserving meter and rhyme. So I think it is impossible to generalize that preserving the rhymes should always come last. And slightly changing the rhyming scheme is also something that could be acceptable as a compromise.

But I'd probably also say that the rhyming should not be the foremost consideration. One of the most famous cases that comes to mind is the terza rima with its chain of rhymes in Dante's Divine Comedy. This is quite natural and "unforced" in Italian (or at least in Dante) but to try it in e.g. German (and probably English as well) is not only horrendously difficult and one would probably have to subordinate almost all other aspect to get the verses to rhyme properly but it also tends to sound cheesy and far less musical in a language not as rich of vocals as Italian.
[I just looked it up: There are poems in terza rima by e.g. Shelley (Ode to the West Wind), also Goethe and Hoffmansthal, so masters can make it work, but these are short to medium length poems, not 1000s of verses and it is of course also a difference if one can make up his own stuff or has to preserve other features in a translation.]

[Madiel]

I'm thinking of this issue entirely in the context of the text of musical works.

And that usually means that the original text is sitting there, printed alongside. That's certainly the expectation. I might feel differently about a poem I'm reading on its own, but that's not what I'm thinking about here. I'm thinking about a text I am reading while listening to someone sing the original language set to music.

[kishnevi]

I'm thinking of this issue entirely in the context of the text of musical works.

And that usually means that the original text is sitting there, printed alongside. That's certainly the expectation. I might feel differently about a poem I'm reading on its own, but that's not what I'm thinking about here. I'm thinking about a text I am reading while listening to someone sing the original language set to music.

In such a case, I definitely want only a literal prose translation.
Performing a translation--say, singing Schubert lieder in English--raises a different set of questions.

[Madiel]

Yes. Like, why the hell do you feel the need to muck about with all of the vowel sounds and syllables that the composer was using?

[Monsieur Croche]

For poetry, I think rhymed translations always end up sacrificing shades of nuance as well as the actual meaning or color of the intent.  I'm totally against them.  A reader who does not know the original language, does not even know how to sound it out, will be able to see  from looking at the original text that it is rhymed.

One of the more startling examples of forced rhyme vs. a more natural (not forced) translation is the late Victorian -- Edwardian translations of Sappho into English and the 1958 Sappho translations by Mary Bernard.

The English (British) translations are invariably in rhymed couplets in one set meter.   Compare any of those to the translations of Sappho by Mary Barnard,
Sappho: A New Translation (University of California Press' 1958).

Barnard made no attempt to rhyme, and according to a world-wide assortment of experts in ancient Greek who know the Sappho fragments well, Barnard really recreated Sappho in English -- in the what and why of so many over the centuries having so much admiration for:  Sappho's stunning ease of virtuosity in the range and mix of meters she used within even the briefest of the brief fragments, always at the service of the meaning of the texts, and she captured the outright everyday directness and immediacy in Sappho's choice of word usage.

If you know of Sappho from those late 19th early 20th century English translations -- in 'forced rhyme' so limited, formal and stiff that they are very reductive in what they convey (while being also more than a titch overly precious) you could wonder 'What is all the fuss about this poetess from antiquity?' 

By not forcing rhyme, ever, Barnard made a huge contribution: to about anyone interested, the sense of immediacy, the straightforward manner in which Sappho wrote are clearly evident after reading but a few of the translated fragments.

As Barnard says in her (very witty) preface, "I like to think I got close to "What they say she said."

When it comes to translations of anything sung, rhymed or non, it is so odds against being anywhere near right enough to be thought of as at all 'correct' that it eliminates even the best of translations as less than truly adequate.

Yes, I know there are 'very good' translations of vocal works;  they are all less than truly adequate to that task.

[Jo498]

I'm thinking of this issue entirely in the context of the text of musical works.

And that usually means that the original text is sitting there, printed alongside. That's certainly the expectation. I might feel differently about a poem I'm reading on its own, but that's not what I'm thinking about here. I'm thinking about a text I am reading while listening to someone sing the original language set to music.

o.k., this is a completely different situation. I misunderstood your first post. In that case, it seems fairly obvious that one should have a prose translation.
But this is a very uncommon case. I am pretty sure that you often find those rhymed translations because there was a pre-existing (maybe cheap because old) translation of the poems or songs in question. And for a translation that is supposed to be sung I'd also say that rhyming should not be the main consideration but apparently this was seen differently in former times.

The Sappho example is again a different case because this stuff does not rhyme in the original! Therefore rhymes were a cheesy addition to make it more similar to modern poetry in modern languages or whatever.

[Madiel]

I am pretty sure that you often find those rhymed translations because there was a pre-existing (maybe cheap because old) translation of the poems or songs in question.

Yes, I strongly suspect cheapness is a factor in some of the cases I've encountered. The Dvorak box which has me gnashing my teeth at the moment has the translations as a PDF file on the last disc. No translators are identified. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the translations date back to when the recordings were first made several decades ago. In some cases I wouldn't even be surprised if the translations dated back to the world premiere of the composition, which occurred in the UK.

[Mahlerian]

Inconsistency within a work/collection is probably the worst way to go.  The Chailly disc of Das klagende Lied that I have comes with a translation of Mahler's original German done by two different people, one for parts 2 and 3, and the other for part 1.  The translation for part 1, which was done more recently, was rhymed, in accordance with the original, albeit awkwardly and lamely (not that Mahler's verse is great or anything, but it has a certain naive charm), while parts 2 and 3 are not rhymed.  They should have done one or the other, not both at once.

[Monsieur Croche]

A mere footnote thought on any and all translations, whether those are for a technical manual, poetry or a libretto.

The translator should be a native speaker of the language into which the text is being translated. 

We've all seen the results of when it is the other way around... even if good, they just miss too much, get a certain amount wrong.

[kishnevi]

A mere footnote thought on any and all translations, whether those are for a technical manual, poetry or a libretto.

The translator should be a native speaker of the language into which the text is being translated. 

We've all seen the results of when it is the other way around... even if good, they just miss too much, get a certain amount wrong.

Can't the same argument be made in reverse?
A non-native speaker of the target language will get the nuances wrong in that language, but a non-native speaker of the original language will miss the nuances in the original text.

The best one can hope for is probably someone highly fluent in both languages.

[Jo498]

"passive command" of a language is far easier, even for those who are very good at a foreign language. I suspect that truly bilingual people who grew up with two or more languages as children will usually also have a preferred language. In any case there are probably not enough of those for all necessary combinations of languages and also a general gift for language needed for literary translations.

In any case almost all translators of literary works translate into their native language. Of course many translations are still not very good for several reasons, including insufficient knowledge or feeling for nuances of the language translated from. Another reason that many translations are not all that good is probably that to my knowledge it is very poorly paid (literature) considering the abilities needed.

[Ken B]

"passive command" of a language is far easier, even for those who are very good at a foreign language. I suspect that truly bilingual people who grew up with two or more languages as children will usually also have a preferred language. In any case there are probably not enough of those for all necessary combinations of languages and also a general gift for language needed for literary translations.

In any case almost all translators of literary works translate into their native language. Of course many translations are still not very good for several reasons, including insufficient knowledge or feeling for nuances of the language translated from. Another reason that many translations are not all that good is probably that to my knowledge it is very poorly paid (literature) considering the abilities needed.

Agreed. Aside from anything else, in your native tongue you can more easily detect the subtle connotations. I think it will be easier to discuss and rethink based on asking native speakers of the original if you have the right sense and undertones that way.
And as a practical matter, so few native speakers of Latin have a good grasp of English.

[Jo498]

And as a practical matter, so few native speakers of Latin have a good grasp of English.

Blame the low birthrate of Vatican City...