KATHERINE GALLAGHER

The pRO Tour, 2009.

 As soon as I heard some time back that the illustrious and dynamic Anne Stewart (poetry p f) had teamed up with the equally illustrious and dynamic Professor Lidia Vianu (University of Bucharest) and her remarkable team of translators, Elena Nistor and Lavinia Zainea - to celebrate the first year of their collaboration in a pRO Tour around various British cities, I knew it would be a success - that it would run like clockwork in line with all those cliches of smooth organization. And so it did. A remarkable tribute to them, their translators, and the poets. Poets are usually particularly happy to be translated for it gives their poems a second life. Anyway, the tour was a great celebration of poetry and importantly, poetry in translation.

I was involved in the translation workshop at Middlesex University on the 30th March, 2009 and was fascinated by the plan for the workshop and its effectiveness. In her letter to Anne Stewart (5th April), Catriona Mowat (Liaison Organizer for the Literary Festival, Middlesex University) summed up the mood :

'On behalf of the Literary Festival, I would like to thank everyone involved in your workshop for being a part of our festival. Your workshop was not only popular and well attended, it looked to be a lot of fun and we're very happy that we were able to be a part of it in some small way. Please pass on our thanks to Lavina, Elena, Rik, Katherine and Maggie as you were all outstanding. I also want to give my personal thanks to you for being so easy to work with, especially considering that we are students and this was our first try at organising a festival.'

Bravo! I feel that she captured the essential mood of this session as led by the translators, Elena Nistor and Lavinia Zainea from the University of Bucharest: it was fun. Hardworking too, of course. Effectively, participants were given a step-by-step presentation of the techniqes and difficulties of poetry translation, via a workshop exercise, discussion and readings. The actual translation-exercise from Romanian to English focused on my poem, Circus-Apprentice, (thank you!) using a translation by Elena Nistor. Participants were given a glossary of Romanian nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives used in the poem and notes on pronouns and accents. It was sheer delight to see these would-be translators hunting together like detectives working through some puzzle as they tried to translate the poem into English, only occasionally asking Elena or Lavinia for help.

The workshop showed the inherent satisfaction and pleasure of creatively interpreting meanings with the help of a glossary and trying to create a new poem in English. Perhaps too, between the lines, was the realization that every attempt at a translation is 'a version' of some kind, anyway. It was fascinating to see the 'group' surprise when the workshoppers later heard the poem in English. Some were better able than others to work from their experience to 'discover' the poem's content. A young man who'd had much experience of the circus in his childhood in China was very imaginative in making the links between images.

For essentially, translation is about using clues to make links so that the overall pattern knits together. Poetry nestles metaphor and perhaps the most difficult thing for these fledgling translators was to
get a sense of the metaphors in Circus-Apprentice.

Later, it was again very pleasurable to hear all the 'pRO poets' assigned to this workshop - Maggie Butt, Rik Wilkinson and myself - reading a few poems in English, to be followed in each case by a reading from either Lavinia or Elena, the hardworking translators. . Beautifully planned, and concluding with a question-and-answer slot, this workshop was a very informative and affirming occasion; it gave us a better sense of the sounds and rhythms of Romanian poetry, and it may encourage the Middlesex Literary Festival to include a translation workshop in their programme next year.

A coda from me: as someone who's translated a poet from French into English, I was curious and very pleased to have the chance to see the methods adopted by the translators. Translating requires a love of, and a good working knowledge of, the 'other' language, a willingness to experiment with various options, and endless patience. This workshop was a learning-curve for all concerned.

I was also fortunate to attend the 'pRO' Tour Grand Finale hosted by the Romanian Cultural Institute. Another fantastic evening followed by a concert from brilliant young Romanian musicians.

Over the last few years, I have been observing how translation is increasingly coming to be considered as a separate literary art - growing in importance in universities and other higher learning insitutions. Occasionally, one hears it said that poetry is the most difficult genre to translate?? Perhaps, but therein lies the challenge.

Many thanks and congratulations!,
Very best wishes,
Katherine