Translations

Just a quick post tonight, to report on the fact that my last two entries on my other blog have to do with language and translation, and otherwise connect to topics previously coming up here on Blog Time Passing.

First, Two Poems Translated features translations of my The Ten Commandments and of Ghosts of the City of Gods from Teotihuacán: Two Poems, both of which have come up in previous posts. And while previously my scholarly work has been translated into a number of languages, i.e., Hebrew, Hungarian, Finnish, Mandarin, French, Italian, Spanish, etc., this is indeed a first, and a distinct honor, because I have never had anything translated into Quenya, one of the Elvish languages created by J. R. R. Tolkien. The fact that there are people who study and use these languages came up in a previous post as well. Oh, and the fellow who translated the poems, Rodger Ashton-Smith, was mentioned in my recent post on New Zealand.

Second, hops-spittle is a poem that has to do with my daughter being hospitalized for seizures, and in the comments section I provide a little explanation about how her use of language as a child with moderate autism differs from typical individuals, along with a bit of translation.

Translation is not about creating identical and interchangeable copies, it's about making connections, forging links, creating networks. It's a form of mediation in all senses of the word.