On Translation

Something about Sunlight


Something about sunlight -
Slanting behind trees
Streaming into windows
Glancing on walls
Dappling the peeling paint
Glinting on the steel railings
Gilding the new buildings
Dancing the dust eddies
As if calling out the name
Of everything it touches -
Reminds me
Of some childhood afternoon
When I was alone.


May Kung Ano sa Silahis ng Araw (Tagalog Translation)


May kung ano sa silahis ng araw -
Lumilihis sa likuran ng mga puno
Dumadaloy sa mga bintana
Dumadaplis sa mga dingding
Kinukulayan ang natatalop na pintura
Kumikinang sa mga bakal na barandilya
Ginigintuan ang mga bagong gusali
Umiindak sa mga ipu-ipong alabok
Animo'y pinupukaw ang ngalan
Ng lahat ng kanyang mahawakan -
Sa akin ay nagpapagunita
Ng ilang hapon ng aking kabataan
Noong ako'y nagiisa.


At Mt. Samat War Memorial


Into the bowel of Mt. Samat
my son and I descend,

into the caverned memory
of the war of my fathers:

Their pictures smile at us,
or stare in the distance,

their heavy feet stir
the dust of the Death March.

I muse on the noble causes
for which men go to war,

my son and admires the guns
that defended or killed them.

Sa Bantayog ng Bundok Samat (Tagalog Translation)


Sa kaibuturan ng Bundok Samat
ako at anak ko'y lumusong

sa yungib ng alaala
ng digmaan ng aming mga ama:

Kanilang mga larawan sa amin ay nakangiti
o nakatitig sa di kalayuan,

binubuhay muli ng kanilang mabibigat na hakbang
ang alabok ng Martsa ng Kamatayan.

Napagwari ko ang dakilang motibo
ng kalalakihang nagtungo sa digmaan,

anak ko'y humahanga sa mga armas
na sa kanila'y nagtanggol o kumitil.


Choosing a guinea pig for my Literary Translations project was not that hard. I just picked whose poet’s work is readily available in my personal library. It was actually last term when Dr. Marj Evasco gave us a view on how to read a poem that I first heard of Marne Kilates. His emailed reading of Dr. Evasco’s poem made the first introduction. It was casual and informal. I even mistaken him for a woman (somehow Marne sounds female to me), however his close reading of the poem sparkle to me like a gold with genuine worth of carat. I began to research more about him. I also bought his latest collection of poetry, Mostly in Monsoon Weather and wrote the date on the right corner of the first page - just a little habit of mine.

I decided to choose the required 5 poems as easy as picking flowers. I chose the ones that tickle my imagination, the one that left vivid images on my mind and which I could somehow relate with. “Something about Sunlight” was the first poem in the collection and the first among my choices. The mystic effect of the sunlight also brought me to reminiscence when the world looks bright and beautiful in my young eyes like how the speaker of the poem was reminded of his childhood afternoons.

The poignant and contemporary sound of Kilates’ poetry allures me more to continue on my venture of translation. I picked the rest of the poem relying only with my senses and not with a strict standard or category in my head. “At Mt. Samat War Memorial” for instance, was an experience I shared with the son in the poem. I have visited Mt. Samat and watched the showcased memorabilia. The remnants of war caught my interest and I was impressed by its antiquity and foreignness though I somehow missed its historical essence like the son in the poem, caught in the “what” and not “why” the guns were used during the war.
I translated the poem with faith that Robert Bly’s Eight Stages of Translation would guide me towards its closest meaning. I started rendering word per word and line per line using English–Tagalog Dictionary and the very handy medium of the internet. I laughed at the outcome and felt afraid at the same time that I might have undermined the original language of the poem by translating it wrongly. My attempt to transpose the language to a new tongue distorted the original. However, Kilates himself said, a translator is a traitor precisely because he is, by nature and function, betraying the “secrets” of one language. For instance, both Gujarati and Swahili are Greek to us so we need a translator to betray to us their secrets. He also said that if one language does not grow in the understanding of another language, if it does not reveal its secrets, it will die
As my translation activity started, reality of word flashed on the page. The Tagalog translation is richer in syllables though both languages gave me the same word count. After literal translation, choosing of words was my next task. I had a problem in the word “bowel” in the first line. Literally, it means intestine or inside. When I wrote it in Tagalog, the sense and the sound suffer. I knew I was about to make a great violence to the poem that could possibly lead to destruction. I spent many days on this single line before I settle to a word which I think sounded right. I sought to transport the word(s) to Tagalog by not merely focusing on the equivalent words but also its context.

The same challenge of word equivalence hit me again in line 9 /I muse on the noble causes/ which I believe is the thought of the whole poem. I translated it to /naisip ko ang sanhi/. My bowel churned in disagreement and my heart didn’t leap for the impact I felt in the original. I went back again and again on this line for several days as if coaxing the right words to come.
The next issue I work on was how to make it sound like a poem. Following Barbara Reynolds’ advised in Pleasure Craft, I tried to take care of the sense and let the sound take care of itself.

Neither the poem nor the voice is mine, I wasn’t sure whether my choice of words are the best, either for meaning or sound, but Marne Kilates said that there is one thing the translator is not. The translator is not a critic. His work is to help the author’s intention across the gulf between two languages, transpose it in the familiar habits of the translating language.
However, submission date is ought to come. I knew my last draft is not really the final. After all, translation is never really finished.