Key words: poetry, sound, translation, languages, world literature<\/p>\n
As readers from Johann von Goethe to Pascale Casanova have pointed out, the path into world literature, Weltliteratur, leads through translation. It is profoundly unfair that what they mean is translation into world languages, but that transfer is also what can make clear that a brilliant Macedonian poet is the equal of any other on earth. Though of course it must be a good translation.<\/p>\n
Aco \u0160opov is one poet who has entered world literature through a presence in other languages. A huge wealth of \u0160opov’s poetry, in the original and often in multiple translated versions, may be found at the Aco \u0160opov’s Lyrical House<\/em><\/a>; this makes it easy to compare different versions of a single poem.<\/p>\n Even such a rich and thoughtfully designed website will not have the impact of a physical book of translations that a reader might come upon by chance in a shop, read about in a review, or carry around in a purse or pocket to browse at odd moments. On the other hand, it would be unusual for a journal or book to include translations into multiple languages, unless it were a scholarly journal or a specialized academic publication.<\/p>\n That website has allowed me to examine translations of Sopov’s fundamental work “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442” (1963) into six other languages: English, French, German, Montenegrin, Russian, and Spanish (2), and to discuss them in this brief study.<\/p>\n One might argue that poetry distills what is most possible and powerful in language of the poet. This makes translating poetry a vexed project from the start. There is so much the translator must know: not only the dictionary meanings of words, but their resonance in history, folk culture, and the literature of the original culture, as well as their relationship to poems and events outside that culture. The rhythm and sound of the original may be easy to perceive for someone from outside, but that makes them no easier to convey in a language endowed with different sounds and rhythms.<\/p>\n \u0160opov works on every possible poetic level: his poetry is rich in sound, rhythmically various, and studded with unexpected words-all drawing the reader’s attention to the language itself. As Roman Jakobson (1960) would say, this is the necessary aesthetic quality of poetic language. \u0160opov’s ideas alone may be intriguing, but merely reporting ideas is not sufficient to create a poem. He refers to other texts or lore, forms webs of citation with other places, times and languages. Translators must recognize these elements and somehow address them, though they have only the resources of their own language.<\/p>\n \u0160opov himself was a translator, of course, enriching the library in Macedonian with works by essential foreign authors. That too makes it important to see how the poet himself has been served in translation.<\/p>\n The languages of the translations I examine enjoy various relationships to the Macedonian original: the list includes other Slavic languages with their own distinct verbal texture and poetic habits, closer to Macedonian or more distant in the Slavic linguistic world, and then four Western European languages that have their own traditions and distinctions. Of all these languages, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish count as “world languages” that offer paths into a much broader readership, while Montenegrin (3), like Croatian and Serbian, may be called a “small” language yet is close enough to Macedonian geographically, linguistically and culturally that it may well capture some elements that English or French-or even Russian-could not convey.<\/p>\n When I mentioned this conference to a Serbian poet I have been translating, she said: Ah, \u0160opov, on je divan pesnik!<\/em> [Oh, \u0160opov, he’s a wonderful poet!] … But we had never had occasion to speak about him before that. It was Christina Kramer and Rawley Grau’s translation project that brought \u0160opov to my attention.<\/p>\n Since there are eight translations of the poem, I will limit this examination to a few important details across its translations. “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442” is represented on acosopov.com by translations into seven languages (4). The presence of seven languages (with two versions each for Montenegrin and Spanish!)* underlines the poem’s importance in \u0160opov’s oeuvre: either the translators noticed its central place in his work of the time, or their editors urged them to undertake this poem. The Bulgarian**, Hungarian, Montenegrin and Russian translations date from the socialist period, in which the “brotherly” socialist nations of Eastern Europe more often bothered to translate one another’s poetry, but this poem is also represented in English, French, German and Spanish-all of them, again, world languages in terms of translation (3).<\/p>\n The translations appear here in alphabetical order by language for the reader’s convenience. I linger on a group of nodes-or knots, or gnarls-in hope that the trouble spots in a poem undergoing translation will be revealed by the variation in solutions (6).<\/p>\n These selected segments are: the first two lines (and their recurrences later in the text), the third and fourth lines, and then the final lines of the poem. In a few cases I offer my own translation of parts of a translation into English, likewise for the reader’s convenience but also to make clear my interpretation of the translator’s results.<\/p>\n The poem opens with some difficult phonetics, two end-stopped lines that bristle with clusters of consonants, slowing down the reader:<\/p>\n\u0413\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0434 \u043d\u0430 \u0433\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0434. Those two lines also repeat in lines 5-6 and lines 18-19, which obviously has the effect of emphasis: either they repeat in the experience of the poet, who seems to encounter them over and over again in the course of his word’s birth, or else the poet must keep returning to their weighty simplicity in order to witness the word’s birth. Their concreteness points away from the word’s abstraction, suggesting that it is both an elemental thing (stone being the ultimate form of the element of earth, the only one that can both burn and melt in volcanic processes) and a complicated thing (\u0433\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0434, which word offers a challenge to every translator, as we shall see).<\/p>\n The third and fourth lines form a single sentence extending across both lines:<\/p>\n\u041a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0430 \u0448\u0443\u043c\u0430 Although the idea of a stone (petrified?) forest or a frozen one is not comforting, these sounds are more phonetically open, with vowels shifting between “a”, “e” and “\u0438,” consonants dwelling on “\u043c” and “\u043d”. The poem moves through multiple ideas and sound effects before the poet demands to be admitted to the stone fortress, to burn and melt in contact with the word:<\/p>\n\u0434\u0430 \u0438\u0437\u0433\u043e\u0440\u0430\u043c \u0432\u043e \u0458\u0430\u0433\u043b\u0435\u043d\u043e\u0442 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442, The poem does not foreground rhyme (as many of Sopov’s earlier poems do), but the ending has a marked musical quality: the sound “o” recurs, and “\u0434\u0430 \u0438\u0437\u0433\u043e\u0440\u0430\u043c” and “\u0434\u0430 \u0441\u0435 \u0441\u0442\u043e\u043f\u0430\u043c” have several elements of resemblance as the two lines begin (and, in the second case, as the poem’s final line ends).<\/p>\n Christina Kramer and Rawley Grau in their 2022 version pay attention to all elements of the original (7), though their first two lines repeat rather than vary the preposition (“\u043d\u0430” and “\u0432\u0440\u0437” in the original), and the two-syllable preposition “upon” may undo a bit of the slowing effect of the short nouns:<\/p>\nGnarl upon gnarl. “Gnarl” as a singular noun is unusual-it occurs more often as the adjective “gnarled” or the current slangy adjective “gnarly,” which might be used to describe a complex argument or situation as much as a twisted branch. Even though the g that opens the word is silent, the three sounded consonants still give complexity to the first line. Kramer and Grau repeat these two lines identically when they recur in lines 5-6 and lines 18-19, trusting the poet to know what he is doing and why; they respect the order of the lines in general, even though English word order sometimes requires changes within a line. The first two lines also reveal that a trait of English that hinders some translations from Slavic languages works well in this case: “gnarl” matches one-syllable \u0433\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0434. Like Macedonian, English does not decline nouns to add syllables after prepositions-as we shall see Montenegrin do in the first line, “\u010cvor na \u010dvoru”.<\/p>\n Lines 3-4 in English take advantage of fortuitous phonetics to offer pleasing soundplay: st\/st\/ss, the long “o”s of “stone” and “frozen”, and a comprehensible neologism in “frozensolidness”. Making a new word from familiar elements lets the translators maintain very close equivalence to the original, though the long and unexpected word definitely slows the reader down-which may be ideal, for the state of being frozen solid. The final two lines again privilege accuracy, though the proximity of the words “coals” and “word” may hint at the resemblance of the words “word” and “world”, by putting an “l” in close proximity. Overall, the English version strives both for adequacy of meaning and for analogous impacts on the reader or listener, be they unexpected word choice, soundplay, or scrupulous adherence to the number and position of lines. The solemn atmosphere of Sopov’s poem and its modernist form allow the translators to skirt many of the issues that could otherwise hamper a translation from Macedonian into English.<\/p>\n Edouard Maunick’s 1994 translation into French, working with what French has to offer, is almost entirely literal, though it too uses one word, “sur,” to render both “\u043d\u0430” (easy to pronounce) and “\u0432\u0440\u0437” (more phonetically dense):<\/p>\nNoeud sur noeud. At the same time, very short end-stopped lines and one-syllable words (8) lend the first two lines in French the same slowing effect, though the words are phonetically simpler. French has fixed word stress, always on the final fully-voiced syllable. Although Macedonian favors stress on the antepenultimate syllable, there are enough one- and two-syllable words (like \u0433\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0434 and \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d, here) to allow a variety of arrangements of stresses in a poetic line. Classical French verse, on the other hand, counts syllables rather than stresses or feet. The French translation in vers libre has a more modern feeling, suited to a poem first published in 1963.<\/p>\n The third line, “\u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0430 \u0448\u0443\u043c\u0430,” has a different rhythm in the original enabled by the longer word “\u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0430”-which French is constitutionally unable to reproduce. At the same time, “For\u00eat p\u00e9trifi\u00e9e” offers a satisfying repetition of the sounds “\u00e9”, “f” and “r”. In the fourth line, the translator chooses the one-syllable word “gel” (ice) for “\u0438\u0437\u0455\u0435\u043c\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0430”, strongly changing that line’s rhythm-the original has no lines with fewer than three syllables, and the single syllable here may force an even stronger pause than expected, “freezing” the poem’s movement before the first and second lines repeat as lines five and six. Maunick uses \u00d4 with circumflex (translating \u0160opov’s “O”) to open lines 11 and 14, conveying an elevated style with more pathos: this lends the modern-feeling free-verse translation a more archaic or timeless feeling, well suited to the original. The word “enceinte,” which can mean both “enclosure” and “pregnant,” may add an unexpected element in line 23; Maunick ends the poem with similar rhetorical elevation but does not use an exclamation point:<\/p>\nque me br\u00fble le charbon Here too the phonetics are poetically effective: “br\u00fble” chimes with “parole”, and the near non-rhyme of “bon” and “fonde” emphasizes the subjunctive of the latter-the indicative would be “je fonds”, a perfect rhyme with “charbon”. Maunick has chosen “parole” rather than “mot”, another and more ordinary term for “word”. “Parole” can have the sense of “password”, a more effective or important word or a word that already partakes of the broader communicative quality of speech.<\/p>\n Ina Jun-Broda’s 1963 translation into German takes advantage of German’s fondness for consonant clusters to render the first two lines as follows:<\/p>\nKnorren an Knorren. Jun-Broda retains the difference of prepositions (with an and auf), and although “Knorren” is two syllables rather than one it has satisfyingly chewy phonetics; the one-syllable “Stein” that follows balances with a shorter second line. Her version repeats the first two lines exactly as lines 5-6, but does not for the original’s second repetition, giving only “Stein auf Stein” in line 17 of the translation. The ending three lines suggest that German wants its grammatical subject earlier in the syntactic unit (and reminds us that German and English much more rarely give a verb with no subject, whereas in Macedonian the subject of “\u0434\u0430 \u0441\u0435 \u0441\u0442\u043e\u043f\u0430\u043c” is evident without the first-person pronoun):<\/p>\nDas ich vergl\u00fch Adding the word “blaugl\u00fchender” towards the end, whereas \u0160opov only uses its equivalent in line 10, is perhaps not necessary: the reader may remember “\u043c\u043e\u0434\u0430\u0440 \u0458\u0430\u0433\u043b\u0435\u043d”, with the word “coal” bringing it back to mind. Moreover, the line just before is “Das ich vergl\u00fch”, so that it is repetitive as well. For the most part, though, Jun-Broda’s translation is scrupulous and respectful.<\/p>\n Sreten Perovi\u0107, a well-known translator of Macedonian literature, published two translations of \u0160opov’s “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442”, one in a 1966 volume of \u0160opov’s work, and one in a different 1977 selection (9). The two versions display some interesting differences, though many of their elements are the same. I did not have access to the volumes, so I have not seen any introductory material and cannot guess whether the changes eleven years later reflect Perovi\u0107’s own evolving approach and poetics, a meaningful conversation with \u0160opov himself, or the suggestions (or demands) of editors at his publishing house. All these might explain the changes in versions that otherwise take advantage of the similarities between Montenegrin-again, recognizing that it is an anachronistic to refer to Montenegrin in texts from 1966 and 1977, when only Serbo-Croatian was generally recognized-and Macedonian, such as the word modar\/\u043c\u043e\u0434\u0430\u0440, “dark blue” (“indigo” on the light spectrum) as distinct from light blue or just-plain-blue, all that is available in the English, French or German versions considered above.<\/p>\n In both translations, Sreten Perovi\u0107 renders “\u0433\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0434” with the word “\u010dvor”, not only close in meaning but luckily offering similar phonetic density. “Kamen” is the same word in both languages, so there would be no reason not to choose it, though his two translations vary the use of prepositions in the crucial repeating lines and change the word order in the second line as well. Like the other languages so far, Montenegrin is prepared to convey the free form of the original: poetries in post-WWII Yugoslavia tended to be up to date with worldwide formal trends and to participate in them fully. The variation in the two versions already appears in the first lines:<\/p>\n\u0427\u0432\u043e\u0440 \u043d\u0430 \u0447\u0432\u043e\u0440\u0443 Perhaps the change of word order in the second line (1977) compensates for repetition of the preposition “na”: it is the same word, but used in a different spot? In the later version Perovi\u0107’s third line reveals some poetic license, combining the third and fourth lines of the original into one: “Kamena \u0161uma smrzlina”***; the word \u0441\u043c\u0440\u0437\u043e\u0442\u0438\u043d\u0430, in 1966, is closer in sound to \u0160opov’s original. After this, the fourth (or fifth) and fifth (or sixth) lines do not repeat the first two lines exactly. The final repetitions of the first two lines-in lines 18-19 (1966) or 17-18 (1977)-both use “\u043d\u0430” in both of the lines. The translator’s free treatment of word order continues even when language differences do not seem to require it, as when line 9 of the original, “\u0417\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442 \u0441\u0435 \u0434\u0432\u043e\u0438 \u043e\u0442 \u0442\u0435\u043c\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0430”, becomes “Rije\u010d se od tmine udvaja”. It preserves something of the original’s rhythm but loses the dactylic ending, perhaps inevitably given the shape of the available words, which are both like and unlike the words in Macedonian (10).<\/p>\n The last lines of the two versions reveal a subtle difference:<\/p>\n\u0434\u0430 \u0438\u0437\u0433\u043e\u0440\u0438\u043c \u0443 \u0443\u0433\u0459\u0435\u043d\u0443 \u0440\u0438\u0458\u0435\u0447\u0438, The earlier version has the speaker burning up in the coal (locative) of the word, while the later one has the speaker burning up into the coal (accusative): the first puts him within the word’s furnace, while the second turns him into the word itself, identifying him with it.<\/p>\n This translator does tend to tinker with word order more than seems necessary. I wonder whether this is meant, consciously or not, in part to underline that these are different languages with different poetic traditions and demands. Perovi\u0107 had a long connection with Macedonian literature and surely made the changes after due consideration of their impact. It may be worth noting that the difference in gender between masculine \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\/\u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442 and feminine rije\u010d has no impact on the significance or effect of the poem.<\/p>\n The Russian translation by Vadim Sikorsky comes from a 1964 collection of \u0160opov’s poetry with six different translators guided by one editor. Their work almost certainly followed the common Soviet practice of supplying translators with \u043f\u043e\u0434\u0441\u0442\u0440\u043e\u0447\u043d\u0438\u043a\u0438<\/em>, interlinear versions or “trots” of the original that included not only dictionary meanings but also (ideally) information about rhythm, word order and sound patterns. Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, like Macedonian, but it is not a sure thing that these translators ever saw the poems in the original language (11).<\/p>\n A number of Russian translations of \u0160opov’s earlier, more formal poems reproduce their meter and rhyme-additionally easy for a translator into Russian given the continuation and thus familiarity of formal norms in the Soviet period (12), with the advantages of the language’s free word order and variety of word length and stress positions. Since the form of “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442” is not metrical, Sikorsky (and his editor) had greater freedom in decisions about word choice.<\/p>\n Therefore it is remarkable that he decides to use the word “\u0432\u0435\u0442\u043a\u0430” to render “\u0433\u043b\u0443\u0436\u0434”. The first few lines are:<\/p>\n\u041a\u0430\u043a \u0432\u0435\u0442\u043a\u0430 \u0441 \u0432\u0435\u0442\u043a\u043e\u0439- “\u0412\u0435\u0442\u043a\u0430” means a twig, a slender branch, and though one might imagine twigs in a tangle it is an odd choice to render a word that suggests a knot or a complex joint. The image of stone woods shivering in a cold wind is pleasing, but the following line changes the meaning of the original so capriciously that I am persuaded the translator was working from an interlinear version: “Like a living [being, masc.] with a living [being, masc.]” does not repeat the first line with its twigs. Instead it changes them, not trusting the poet’s intentions or the effect of his exact repetitions. The third appearance of the first two lines, here occurring in lines 15-16, does however repeat the first two lines as given (13).<\/p>\n The Russian version does some elegant things with rhythm, as its longer lines tend toward a predominately trimeter rhythm (dactyl and amphibrach) than might reflect awareness of the stress patterns of the original language-if not of the specific achievements of the original poem. See lines 8-11:<\/p>\n\u041a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u044c \u043e \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u044c Sikorsky did receive good information about the kind of blue involved, which Russian is able to convey with the word “\u0441\u0438\u043d\u0438\u0439”. The final ideas of the original are shifted up to lines 21-22, with seven other lines still to follow:<\/p>\n\u0418 \u0441\u0430\u043c \u044f \u0445\u043e\u0447\u0443 \u043e\u0431\u0436\u0435\u0447\u044c\u0441\u044f \u043e \u0441\u043b\u043e\u0432\u043e, At the poem’s end, the translator again tinkers with the order of lines and adds a few final elements (introduced by the pathos-laden “o”, which \u0160opov uses twice in earlier lines with a kind of vocative function, addressing the word), placing the word “\u0421\u043b\u043e\u0432\u043e!” in final position:<\/p>\n\u043e, \u0441\u0443\u0449\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0443\u044e\u0449\u0435\u0435 \u043d\u0435\u0437\u0440\u0438\u043c\u043e The initial letter C here is capitalized and followed by an exclamation point, which adds more pathos than the original seems to require; the original has no exclamation points at all. I would argue that this makes \u0160opov seem more rhetorically overheated and less sophisticated as a poet, whereas the original is powerful in its restrained passion. The capital letter and altered punctuation add a touch of old-fashioned poetic rhetoric that does not do justice to the original. The changes introduced are considerably more than what Perovi\u0107 does in his translations, and they cause a greater alteration in the poem’s effect.<\/p>\n The website devoted to \u0160opov helpfully includes two translations of “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442” into Spanish, in this case made by two different translators in different years (14). The first version, translated by Aurora Marya Saavedra, not only repeats the first two lines precisely in lines 5-6 but offers a footnote supplying the original word, though in transliteration:<\/p>\nNudo sobre nudo(*). (*) Nudo de la madera (“Glu\u017ed” es el t\u00e9rmino original)<\/p>\n “Nudo” means knot, joint or bend (or, as the common etymology suggests, node), so the translator (or her editor) sees fit to explain in her note that “Glu\u017ed” is a knot or node of matter, something particularly elemental. Lines 17-18 repeat the same first lines; although each iteration uses a single preposition (“sobre” = upon or above) rather than finding two, the precise repetition conveys respect for the choices of the poet.<\/p>\n Spanish is more resistant to consonant clusters, so it would be difficult if not impossible to create the effect of “glu\u017ed” even as much as English does with “gnarl” or German with “Knorren”, but the br\/dr repetitions in “sobre” and “Piedra” do what can be done to express density with sound.<\/p>\n Another advantage of Spanish in this translation is the possibility of conveying a first-person speaker with verb forms alone, avoiding the first-person pronoun. Thus, in the final two lines of this version:<\/p>\npara arderme en la brasa de la palabra Saavedra does indulge in a more emotional or romantic-feeling ellipsis at the end, whereas \u0160opov’s original end-stop is more declarative, making the poem as a whole feel less like a daydream. Like the first lines, the last ones use the “r” sound very effectively, packing in five r’s in the penultimate line (for an effect of strong energy?), followed by only three in the final line and ending with the softer sounds of “en ella” ([with]in it; in Spanish the word “palabra” is feminine in gender).<\/p>\n Luisa Futoransky’s surname suggests a connection with Slavic lands; in any case, her translation from 2011 differs more from Saavedra’s than the two by Perovi\u0107 differ among themselves. This version too repeats the first two lines precisely, and it even takes note of the differing prepositions:<\/p>\nNudo a nudo. Like the French version****, Futoransky’s jumps to a higher level of abstraction with the word “petrificado”, its Latin root already looking and sounding distant from “piedra” (as does “p\u00e9trifi\u00e9e” from “pierre”). The first two lines also repeat in lines 19-20 (a line has been broken differently just before, adding one to the count). The final two lines are briefer than in Saavedra’s version, and they adhere more closely to the original:<\/p>\nque me quema el carb\u00f3n Both Futoransky and Saavedra choose the word “fundir” (or its subjective form), related to the English word “foundry” (a place for melting metals) but also perhaps suggesting the word “profound”, whose root refers to the bottom of something rather than to melting (or smelting). Both also shift the speaker into the accusative (“fundirme”, “que me quema”, “que me fundo”) to be more passively burned and melted by the coal of the word, while \u0160opov has the speaker planning to burn and melt in active voice once admitted to the word’s stone fortress: “\u0434\u0430 \u0438\u0437\u0433\u043e\u0440\u0430\u043c…”, “\u0434\u0430 \u0441\u0435 \u0441\u0442\u043e\u043f\u0430\u043c”.<\/p>\n In conclusion, it is clear that the number of translations shows this poem taken as one of Aco \u0160opov’s most significant-enough that in two* languages it has been translated twice. Even with this examination limited to a few lines of the text, we see that most of the translators have perceived the power of the simplicity and the repetitions and have striven to stay as close as possible to the original in form as well as meaning (15).<\/p>\n Every translation reveals evidence of attention to the sounds of the original, even in cases where the new language cannot convey the effect of a sound cluster or handles word stress in a very different way. The most egregious example of tinkering with the original, the Russian translation, almost certainly suffered as it was translated from an interlinear version by a translator who did not know or even see the original language of the poem, and the resulting compromise of poetic power is much greater than the possible losses in other cases of introduced changes (such as, for example, ending the poem with a hesitant ellipsis rather than a confident period). “\u0420\u043e\u0436\u0434\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u0441\u043b\u043e\u0432\u0430” retains some of \u0160opov’s ideas, but it makes a less convincing case for him as a poet. This is especially regrettable given the importance of poetry in the Soviet Union in the years of the “Thaw”.<\/p>\n At the same time, reading a variety of translations such as these both foregrounds the power-in this case, somewhat grim power-of the original, and lifts up the beauty of the different languages involved, the things they can do with sound and word choice that suggest to the reader the aesthetic value of a poem in a language the reader cannot access. We see that Aco \u0160opov, whose work has inspired so many movements across boundaries of language, nation, and literary tradition, can move his translators into birthing a new word.<\/p>\n\t (1)\u00a0\u00a0I wish to thank the organizers of the International Scientific Conference “100th\u00a0Anniversary of the Birth of Aco \u0160opov” conference for inviting me to participate; the other presenters for their very interesting and informative papers; and Christina Kramer and Rawley Grau for making some of their forthcoming translations of \u0160opov available to me prior to their publication.<\/p>\n (2)\u00a0\u00a0Lack of linguistic competence obliges me to leave aside the translations into Bulgarian and Hungarian also on the site. These too may be called “small” languages, but each has a sophisticated poetic tradition.<\/p>\n (3)\u00a0\u00a0I recognize, of course, that it is anachronistic to describe Sreten Perovi\u0107’s two translations (1966 and 1977) as being in Montenegrin, an even “newer” language than Macedonian and still the subject of linguistic dispute. At the same time, his translations’ linguistic features clearly fit the bill.<\/p>\n (4)\u00a0\u00a0The web page lists Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian as options, but all three links lead to Sreten Perovi\u0107’s translations of the poem*****.<\/p>\n (5)\u00a0\u00a0German is not a world language in terms of number of speakers, but it counts in the realm of translation, given its long and continuing tradition of translating literature, its contribution to theory about translation, and the attention German culture pays to the literatures of Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n (6)\u00a0\u00a0Margaret Sayers Peden, in “Building a Translation, the Reconstruction Business: Poem 145 of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,” suggests on the other hand that the variety in part of a dozen translations of one sonnet by Sor Juana reveals that the sonnet is weak there: “The seemingly sound architecture of the sonnet is actually trompe l’oeil” (27).<\/p>\n (7)\u00a0I look forward very much to the publication of\u00a0The Long Coming of the Fire<\/i><\/a>, the selection of translations of \u0160opov by Kramer and Grau-and the first full collection in English devoted solely to his poetry. My thanks to Kramer and Grau for sharing some of their translations with me in advance of this publication.<\/p>\n (8)\u00a0\u00a0Traditional French versification and diction would pronounce the final “e” word “pierre” as an additional unemphasized syllable, so in this translation it could be taken here as a perfect rendering of the word “\u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d”. I do not know how a contemporary French reader would take the line, reading it silently or aloud.<\/p>\n (9)\u00a0\u00a0Both translations have the same title. “\u0420\u0430\u0452\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u0440\u0438\u0458\u0435\u0447\u0438” in \u041f\u0440\u0435\u0434\u0432\u0435\u0447\u0435\u0440\u0458\u0435<\/i>, Titograd: 1966, and “Ra\u0111anje rije\u010di” in\u00a0Dugo doala\u017eenje ognja<\/i>, Beograd: Re\u010d i misao, 1977. I derived this information from <www.acosopov.com>, and I reproduce the punctuation found there in citations.<\/p>\n (10)\u00a0The syllable count could have been retained by putting the verb in the past tense: udvajala, though that would change the line’s meaning. So many translating decisions cannot satisfy every criterion.<\/p>\n (11)\u00a0\u00a0Vadim Sikorsky, 1922-2012, is listed on the fantlab.ru web site as the translator of science fiction-related poems from Armenian, Hebrew, Kyrgyz, Romanian, Uzbek, and Yiddish. It would be remarkable if he knew all these languages. The background on Sikorsky that I was able to find does not mention his work with Macedonian.<\/p>\n (12)\u00a0\u00a0It is worth noting that despite the political impositions of the Soviet Union after the Second World War, poetic traditions in socialist countries of Eastern Europe were much more connected to the overall European shifts away from formal verse, especially in comparison to official Russophone poetry of the Soviet era.<\/p>\n (13)\u00a0\u00a0The text as supplied by <www.acosopov.com> has what I assume is a typographical error-a missing space-in line 15: “\u041a\u0430\u043a \u0432\u0435\u0442\u043a\u0430 \u0441\u0432\u0435\u0442\u043a\u043e\u0439” rather than “\u043a\u0430\u043a \u0432\u0435\u0442\u043a\u0430 \u0441 \u0432\u0435\u0442\u043a\u043e\u0439”.<\/p>\n (14)\u00a0\u00a0“Nacimiento de la palabra”, translated by Aurora Marya Saavedra,\u00a0Lector de cenizas<\/i>, 1987; “Nacimiento de la palabra”, translated by Luisa Futoransky,\u00a0Sol Negro<\/i>, 2011.<\/p>\n (15)\u00a0\u00a0Although I cannot comment on the accuracy of the Bulgarian and Hungarian versions, it is easy to see that the translators there too have maintained \u0160opov’s repetitions.<\/p>\n\t Jakobson, Roman O. (1960). “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics”. Thomas A. Sebeok, ed. Style in Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 350-377.<\/p>\n Sayers Peden, Margaret (1989). “Building a Translation, The Reconstruction Business: Poem 145 of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz”. John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte, eds., The Craft of Translation. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 13-27.<\/p>\n \u0160opov, Aco (\u0428\u043e\u043f\u043e\u0432, \u0410\u0446\u043e, 1963). “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442<\/a>“, Aco \u0160opov’s Lyrical House<\/em>, accessed 30 April, 2023. Details of publication are given under the translations into each language.<\/p>\n * Unfortunately, at the time Sibelan Forrester was working on the present study, the French translation of a selection of \u0160opov’s poems by Djurdja Sinko-Depierris and Jean-Louis Depierris had not yet been published in Aco \u0160opov’s Lyrical House. The poem “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442”, translated as “Naissance du mot” is\u00a0at the top of this collection, published under the title En chasse de ma voix<\/em> (In Search of My Voice) by \u00c9ditions Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e8s, in Paris, in 1978.<\/p>\n ** In fact the Bulgarian translation dates from 2012. \u0160opov has never been translated in Bulgarian before.<\/p>\n *** The editorial team of Aco \u0160opov’s Lyrical House apologizes for the error made when posting the poem translated in 1977. In the printed book, the third and fourth lines are not combined into one: “Kamena \u0161uma \/ smrzlina”.<\/p>\n **** Leaving in Paris and fluent in French, Argentinian poetess Luisa Futoransky translated \u0160opov’s poems from Edouard Maunick’s French translations and then revised them line by line with Jasmina \u0160opova (the author’s daughter), who is fluent in Macedonian and French. Futoransky did not have access to Saavedra’s Spanish translation.<\/p>\n ***** Among the languages currently available in WordPress , Serbo-Croatian does not exist. Yet, this is the most appropriate name for translations published until the late 1980s. Only Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian are available. This is why all Serbo-Croatian translations appear in these three languages on the website. Montenegrin is not available at the moment (December 2025).<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t Sibelan Forrester<\/strong> teaches Russian language and literature at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, USA. She has published translations of fiction, poetry, and scholarly prose from Croatian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian.She delivered the SLD’s Susana Greiss Lecture for 2018: “A Translator’s Path to Eastern Europe.”<\/p>\n This article is published in \u041c\u0435\u0453\u0443\u043d\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0434\u043d\u0430 \u043d\u0430\u0443\u0447\u043d\u0430 \u043a\u043e\u043d\u0444\u0435\u0440\u0435\u043d\u0446\u0438\u0458\u0430 \u201e\u0421\u0442\u043e \u0433\u043e\u0434\u0438\u043d\u0438 \u043e\u0434 \u0440\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435\u0442\u043e \u043d\u0430 \u0410\u0446\u043e \u0428\u043e\u043f\u043e\u0432”, \u0443\u043d\u0438\u0432\u0435\u0440\u0437\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0442 \u201e\u0413\u043e\u0446\u0435 \u0414\u0435\u043b\u0447\u0435\u0432” – \u0428\u0442\u0438\u043f, \u0424\u0438\u043b\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0448\u043a\u0438 \u0444\u0430\u043a\u0443\u043b\u0442\u0435\u0442, 25 – 26 \u043c\u0430\u0458, 2023 [Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference “100th Anniversary of the Birth of Aco \u0160opov”, held on 25th and 26th May 2023, at the Faculty of Philology of the Goce Del\u010dev University in \u0160tip]<\/p>\n More about Sibelan Forrester<\/a><\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOther articles about \u0160opov in English\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMultilingual bibliography of works on Aco \u0160opov\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paths Into the World Aco \u0160opov’s “Birth of the Word” in Multiple Translations Aco \u0160opov‘s 1963 poem “\u0420\u0430\u0453\u0430\u045a\u0435 \u043d\u0430 \u0437\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043e\u0442” (“Birth of the Word“) has been recognized as a central text in his work and translated into multiple languages. This paper examines eight different translations into six languages (English, French, German, Montenegrin, Russian and Spanish),…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":71347,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-98841","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98841"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98849,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98841\/revisions\/98849"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/71347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Is translating poetry a vexed project?<\/h2>\n
\n\u041a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d \u0432\u0440\u0437 \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d.\n
\n\u0438\u0437\u0455\u0435\u043c\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0430.\n
\n\u0434\u0430 \u0441\u0435 \u0441\u0442\u043e\u043f\u0430\u043c.\nEnglish<\/h2>\n
\nStone upon stone.\nFrench<\/h2>\n
\nPierre sur pierre.\n
\nde la parole, que je fonde.\n(let the charcoal of the word
\nburn me, let me melt.)\nGerman<\/h2>\n
\nStein auf Stein.\n
\nauf blaugl\u00fchender Kohle des Wortes,
\nund zerschmelze.\n(Let me \/ That I burn up
\non the blue-burning\/blue-hot coal of the word
\nand melt.)\nMontenegrin<\/h2>\n
\n\u041d\u0430\u0434 \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u043e\u043c \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d.
\n\u041a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0430 \u0448\u0443\u043c\u0430
\n\u0441\u043c\u0440\u0437\u043e\u0442\u0438\u043d\u0430.
\n\u0427\u0432\u043e\u0440 \u0443 \u0447\u0432\u043e\u0440\u0443
\n\u043d\u0430 \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0443 \u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d, (1966)\n\u010cvor na \u010dvoru.
\nNa kamenu kamen.
\nKamena \u0161uma smrzlina.
\n\u010cvor u \u010dvoru.
\nNad kamenom kamen, (1977)\n
\n\u0434\u0430 \u0441\u0435 \u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u043f\u0438\u043c. (1966)\nda izgorim u ugljen rije\u010di,
\nda se istopim (1977)\nRussian<\/h2>\n
\n\u041a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u044c \u0441 \u043a\u0430\u043c\u043d\u0435\u043c.
\n\u041a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u043b\u0435\u0441
\n\u043d\u0430 \u0432\u0435\u0442\u0440\u0443 \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0434\u0440\u043e\u0433.
\n\u041a\u0430\u043a \u0436\u0438\u0432\u043e\u0439 \u0441 \u0436\u0438\u0432\u044b\u043c-
\n\u043a\u0430\u043c\u0435\u043d\u044c \u0441 \u043a\u0430\u043c\u043d\u0435\u043c.\n(Like [a] twig with [a] twig [is]-
\n[A] stone with [a] stone.
\n[A\/The] stone forest
\nwas chilled in the wind.
\nLike a living [being, masc.] with [a] living [being, masc.] [is]-
\n[a] stone with [a] stone. – SF)\n
\n\u0443\u0434\u0430\u0440\u0438\u0442\u044c\u0441\u044f \u043c\u043e\u0436\u0435\u0442
\n\u0438 \u0432\u044b\u0441\u0435\u0447\u0435\u0442 \u0441\u0438\u043d\u0438\u0439 \u043e\u0433\u043e\u043d\u044c \u0432 \u043d\u043e\u0447\u0438.
\n\u041d\u0435\u0441\u0443\u0449\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0443\u044e\u0449\u0435\u0435 \u0441\u0443\u0449\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0443\u0435\u0442.\n(Stone on\/against stone
\nmay strike
\nand cut out [a] dark-blue fire\/flame in the night.
\nThe nonexistent exists. – SF)\n
\n\u0441 \u043e\u0431\u0443\u0433\u043b\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u043c \u0441\u0435\u0440\u0434\u0446\u0435\u043c \u0438\u0441\u0447\u0435\u0437\u043d\u0443\u0442\u044c \u0432 \u043d\u0438\u0447\u0442\u043e…\n(And I myself want to burn myself against the word,
\nto disappear into nothing with a charred heart… – SF)\n
\n\u0421\u043b\u043e\u0432\u043e!\n(o, existing invisibly
\nWord! – SF, preserving word order that does not work well in English)\nSpanish<\/h2>\n
\nPiedra sobre piedra.
\nBosque de piedras.
\nPiedra fr\u00eda.
\nNudo sobre nudos.
\nPiedra sobre piedra,\n
\nhasta fundirme por entero en ella…\n(in order to burn in the hot coal\/ember of the word
\nuntil I melt entirely [with]in it…)\n
\nPiedra sobre piedra.
\nBosque petrificado.
\nEscarcha.
\nNudo a nudo.
\nPiedra sobre piedra,\n
\nde la palabra, y me fundo.\n(that the coal of the word burn me
\nand melt me. – SF)\nFootnotes<\/h2>\n
Literature<\/h2>\n
\nEditor’s notes<\/h2>\n
![\"Sibelan](\"https:\/\/www.acosopov.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sibelan-Forrester-talking-about-Sopovs-translations-in-English-at-UNESCO-21-March-2023--150x150.jpg\" "\\"Sibelan")
\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSibelan Forrester talking about S\u030copov’s translations in English, at UNESCO, 21st March 2023\n\t