Ivan Franko - new pony of Withered Leaves

The Ukrainian publisher СОЛОМ (SOLOM) has brought out a new bilingual edition of Зів'яле листя by Іван Франко (Ivan Franko's collection "Withered Leaves" (Ziv'yale lystya)) translated by one Іван Теплий (Ivan Teplyy), about whom the book's jacket copy says:

Кандидат філологічних наук, доцент кафедри іноземних мов для гуманітарних факультетів ЛНУ ім. І. Франка. Перекладач, залюблений у своє та чужоземне слово, прагне перевтілити його у рідне, а рідне - в чужоземне. Кредо автора - пересотворити засобами іншої мови те, що пройшло крізь розум і серце, промовляє до душі. Перекладацкі пріоретети - відтворити неповторність оригіналу, зберегти цілісність художного твору, його образність, структуру та ідейний задум автора. Пропонована збірка безсмертних поезій - спроба перекладача якнайповніше явити шедевр світової лірики англомовному читачеві.

(Teplyy is a PhD in linguistics and assistant professor in the foreign languages for humanities department at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (which, by the way, was founded in 1661 - my note). The translator, in love with his own language as well as those of other lands, strives to recreate, using other language, that which passed between the mind and the heart and spoke to the soul. His priorities in translation are to recreate the unreproducible in the original, to preserve the integrity of the artistic creation and its form, and the structure and the philosophical concepts of the author. This collection of immortal poetry is offered as the translator's attempt to present this masterpiece of the world's poetry to the English-speaking reader.)

I really wanted to able to recommend this book whole-heartedly. The man worked pretty hard on this, and he's obviously more gifted than I am, linguistically. (They say that he translates into English and Ukrainian out of English, Middle English, German, French, Spanish, Bulgarian, Russian, Hungarian, and Ukrainian. Though it's possible that he doesn't really know them and just polishes up literal translations done by someone else; that was SOP for Soviet translations...) And I certainly don't want to pretend that I could translate Tennyson or Longfellow into Ukrainian with much more success (though I hope I could). But... there's a working rule that one doesn't translate out of one's native tongue, only into it. And this collection is a good illustration of why that rule exists.

He has the expected problems of register and of picking not quite the right synonym - take 2, III's Ой між усіми дівчатоньками / Лиш одна мені мила (oh, of all the young maidens / Only one is fair for me) which he makes "Oh, among all the dear ladies, / Only one is my thrill" (he wanted to rhyme with "green is the sycamore / the willow greener still"). A little bit later in that poem he turns "Не бачу рожі, не бачу рожі, / Лиш її личка гожі." (I don't see the roses, don't see the roses / Only her rosy face") into "The rose is unseen, the rose is unseen, / Just her fine cheeks are in." In what? Good question; presumably "in sight"...

That stanza shows another problem with Teplyy's translation - or, at least, something that annoys me - and that's how, when he needs another syllable for scansion, he drops in a "dear" or "kind" or "fine", which makes the line a bit more saccharine than needed. Like this, from 2, XIII:

Отсе тая стежечка,
Де дівчина йшла,
Що се мойого сердечка
Щастя унесла.

This fine path runs here,
The girl's on goes way,
That from my heart dear
Happiness took away.

There's the winding path / where the girl went / who from my heart / took away happiness.

First, the syntax - "on goes way"? In his introduction he talks about syntax versus rhyme, but he hasn't quite grasped that in English you can't do the things you can do in Ukrainian. In fact, he defends changing "любити мушу, I have to love you" to "loving you I've got it" by saying that he chose to translate "укомпактнено зворот любити мушу, тобто I've got to love you як один з можливих варіантів. Тут it виступає як замінник інфінітива з часткою to." In English this reads "the compact phrase любити мушу, that is, I've got to love you as one of the possible variations. Here it appears as the infinitive marker in place of the particle to." Well, no: it isn't an infinitive marker and "it love" never means "to love"; that's not a "possible variant"; and "loving you I've got it" isn't English. Nor would "loving you I've got to" be, for that matter: "to loving you" isn't an infinitive or possible, either.

As for this line, well, without the original in front of me, I'm not at all sure what I would think "the girl's on goes way" was supposed to mean. And then, "fine path" and "heart dear"... A few verses later, Franko repeats the line "Отсе тая стежечка" and this time Teplyy has it as "this finest path here". Yes, "стежечка" is a diminutive of "стежка, path" and "сердечко" is a diminutive of "серце, heart", but "fine" and "dear" don't capture what is basically Franko's search for scansion. And they do add a saccharine note that's not in the desperate original.

And often he puts these interpolated adjectives in the wrong place, as when he turns зірниця into "the morning fine star" (annoyingly, it's not even "stars" (зір is the genitive plural of зоря, but зірниця is "summer lightning" or "sheet lightning") to begin with); or "your finest lips", which is not the same as "your lips most fine" if we said "fine" with "lips", which is a bit iffy, but instead implies that she has several pairs of lips; or "feeling fine", which isn't the same as a "fine feeling".

But there's more than that. Teplyy produces lines like this:"When it was still on Earth, / Jesus Christ used to teach" from the Ukrainian "Як Христос по землі ще / Навчати ходив" which is literally "When Christ on earth still / Walked around to teach". Teplyy's line might mean "When it was quiet on Earth, Jesus Christ used to teach" or he might be using "it" to mean Christ - not correct.

That same poem (3 XIX) has this line: Ах, панове! Про трусість / Мовчіть ви мені! (O, gentlemen! About cowardice / You dare to talk to me!) which Teplyy, working very hard for a rhyme, renders as "Ah, my gentlemen! Cowardice / Do not take into strife!".

Here's another (3, XI):

За один її цілунок,
Най горю сто тисяч літ!
За любов її і ласку
Дам я небо, рай, весь світ!

For her only kiss, so be it,
May I thousands of years burn!
For her love and for her caress
I will Eden, all world turn.

He starts by misplacing "only" (it should be "her kiss only" or, better, "just her kiss, her kiss alone") and then totally misses the last line (which should be "I will give heaven, paradise, and all the world"). Also, picky, but it's "I will burn for more than 100,000 years". But you could live with that. were it all. It's not.

Poem 3, XV, in which the speaker renounces his love for a married woman, announcing his intention to leave her in peace with her husband and children and hoping never to trouble her thoughts, begins:

І ти прощай! Твого ім'я
Не відмовкю ніколи я,
В лице твою не гляну!
Бодай не знала ти повік,
Куди се я від тебе втік,
Чим гою серце рану.

Teplyy renders this as

So, farewell, - never again
Your name I mention will - that's plain!
To see you I'm unwilling!
Know not you for the rest of days
Where I have fled, and my own ways
Of wounded heart's good healing

But a more literal rendition shows he's not only torturing English syntax (know not you) he's straying from Franko's meaning:

And you, forgive! Your name
I'll never say,
Nor look upon your face!
So you will never know
Where I have fled from you,
Nor how I heal my heartache.

Now, it's true that "прощання, proshchannya" means "farewell", but "ти прощай, ty proshchay" is not "goodbye". It's the imperative and the nominative pronoun! It might possibly be "you say goodbye" but it's not "goodbye to you"...

He also tends to follow the Ukrainian word order (perhaps hoping to keep the focus or information structure the same) but this, unfortunately, leads to a lot of objects in front of verbs, which is at best akward in English and at worst leads to complete misunderstandings, as in I, X's final lines: "утечу я від лютого болю, / Що серце моє розриває" which he translates as "I shall flee the hankering drear / That my heart is terribly rending." To start with, лютий is more than "dreary", it's "stormy, fierce". But the real problem is that серце моє (my heart) is not the subject of this clause; it's the object. Що is the subject - the relativizing "that". Had this been "it my heart is rending" this would have been clear (awkward, but understandable), but with "that" the English reader will, of course, interpret this as normal English syntax: "the pain that my heart is rending = my heart is rending the pain". His need to rhyme "expanding" with "rending" not only shows his difficulty with English vowels, but causes him to err with the syntax of the final line.

He also takes Franko's great strength - his simplicity (deceptive, perhaps) and his eminent recitability - and loses it. For instance 2, XX begins:

Сипле, сипле, сипле сніг.
З неба сірої безодні
Міріядамі летять
Ті метелики холодні.

Sypleh, sypleh, sypleh snih.
Z neba siroyi bezodni
Mirijadami letjat'
Ti metelyky kholodni.

(note: i = ee, y = i as in 'it', j = y as in 'yet', t' is palatalized)

Falls, falls, falls the snow.
From heaven's gray abyss
In myriads fly
These cold butterflies.

Teplyy makes that:

Strews and strews and strews the snow.
From the heaven's graying chasm
Flying on in myriads
Are cold butterflies, unpleasant.

First, "strew" is transitive; snow can be strewn but it doesn't strew (unless you add "flakes" or something). In the introduction, Teplyy defends using "strew" instead of "fall" (as Percival Cundy did) by saying that "fall" is "падати", which is true, and that "сипати" is "strew". But because his dictionary (he cites Rambler) shows the instrumental as the object of сипати - and in fact, I'd bet the overwhelming majority of uses of "strew" in English are in passive with instrumental (the path was strewn with flowers) - he doesn't realize that it can't be used without an object. It's not unrecitable, but the lines are awkward - stresses don't fall in quite the right place, especially "are cold butterflies". I'd go with something like this:

Snow is falling, falling, falling.
From the endless gray skies
Come thousands on thousands
Of cold butterflies.

Second, where'd "unpleasant" come from? I said he drops in "dears" and "fines" to make up his lines, and he certainly does; but he also likes to drop in other adjectives, like "unpleasant" here, and they don't always fit. Here's another, from I, XV:

І на моє бурливе серце руку
Кладе той привид, зимну, як змія,
І в серці втишує всі думи й муку.

Its hand onto my seething, whirling heart
That spook is laying - snake-cold and adverse -
All thoughts and anguish in the heart it quiets.

And onto my turbulent heart its hand / the spirit places, cold, like a snake, / and in my heart calms all thoughts and torments.

The adjective "cold" is clearly modifying "hand" in Ukrainian, by the way, the gender and case marking makes that unmistakable. But "adverse"? That's Teplyy's opinion of snakes, I fear. Again, his need for scansion causes him to drop in extra modifiers. At least "seething" and "whirling" are both implied by "бурливе".

And another, 2, VII:

А як улетіла,
Вернуть не схотіла,
То забрала за собою
Мою душу з тіла.

A jak uletila / vernut' ne skhotila / to zabrala za soboyu / moju dushu z tila. (u is always oo is in 'cool', a is ah, as 'father')
See how easy that is to recite? And then Teplyy makes it into this:

And when she just off proved,
And never once back flew,
All along she took away
My own body's soul true.

His last line limps. The rhyme is forced. The first line is rhythmic, at the cost of meaning ("just off proved"?). It's more like this:

When she flew away / with no wish to return / she took with herself / the soul from my body.

You could do things with this if the rhyming is important: When she flew away / with no wish to return / she took my soul, too, / and left me to mourn. Or , perhaps: With no wish to return / she up and departed, / flew away with my soul, / left me here, broken-hearted. But "all along she took away my own body's soul true" does Franko a disservice.

Here are a few more examples - Franko, Teplyy, me (a fairly literal translation):

from 1 II

Не знаю, що мене до тебе тягне,
Чим чарувала ти мене, що все,
Коли погляну на твоє лице,
Чогось мов сщастя й волі серце прагне.

I wonder what attracts me to you, draws,
What mesmerized me in you so much that
When just a look upon your eyes I set
The heart, it seems, for bliss and freedom longs.


I don't know what draws me to you / how you charmed me, so that / when I look upon your face / my heart seeks something like happiness and freedom

1 VII

Твої очі, як те море,
Супокійне, світляне:
Серця мого давно горе,
Мов пилинка, в них тоне.

Твої очі, мов криниця,
Чиста на перловим дні,
А надія, мов зірниця,
З ніх проблискує мені.

Your own eyes are like the deep sea,
Peaceful, with a lot of light:
My heart's grief, a long time in me,
Sinks in them, like that fine dust.

Your own eyes as if the well are,
With the bottom of pearls, clean,
And the hope, the morning fine star,
Right from them for me will gleam.

Your eyes are like the sea / peaceful, shining: / the ancient grief of my heart / sinks in them, as into dust

Your eyes are like a spring/ clean and pearl-bottomed; / and hope, like summer lightning / flashes at me from them.

1 X

Безмежнее поле в сніжному завою,
Ох, дай мені обширу й волі!
Я сам серед тебе, лішь кінь підо мною,
І в серці нестерпнії болії.

Неси ж мене, коню, по чистому полю,
Ях вихор, що тутка гуляє,
А чень, утечу я від лютого болю,
Що серце моє розриває.

The boundless field in the snow-drift abundant,
Oh, grant me the freedom and space!
Alone I'm amid you, with steed running under,
And terrible heartaches' embrace.

Oh, take me, steed dear, about the field clear,
Like whirlwind that here's expanding,
And maybe I shall flee the hankering drear
That my heart is terribly rending.

You measureless field blanketed in snow, / oh, grant me space and freedom! / I am alone in you, with only the horse beneath me / and the unbearable pain in my heart.
Oh carry me, my horse, across the empty field / like the storm that's whirling here / and maybe, I can flee from the stormy pain / that's tearing my heart apart.

from 2,XIII

Ось туди пішла вона,
Та гуляючи,
З іншім своїм любчиком
Розмовляючи.

За її слідами я,
Мов безумний, біг,
Цілував з сльозами я
Пил із її ніг.

She went over there,
Well while walking,
To another lover
Well while talking.

After this talk running
Was I, as though mad,
Kissing, tears coming,
Her feet's dust, at that.

So there went she / out walking / with another lover / and talking
Following her, I / As if crazy, ran, / in tears I kissed / the dust from her feet

So, what would my final thoughts on this book be? If you can read Ukrainian fairly well, then I recommend it for its price and having the Ukrainian there. You can read Franko and if you get stuck for a word you can look at the opposite page and get it from Teplyy. If you're a little bit weaker - getting by - you can make use of the book, I think. But if you don't read Ukrainian, this is not the book to introduce you to Franko. Stick with Percival Cundy!