The art of failure in translating a Navajo poem
This article engages John Ciardi’s famous dictum that translation is « the art of failure » by engaging in a thick translation and a creative transposition of a short poem in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim. I begin with reflections on recent discussions in anthropology on translation and voice – both of whic...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Société des américanistes
2016-10-01
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| Series: | Journal de la Société des Américanistes |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/jsa/14602 |
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| Summary: | This article engages John Ciardi’s famous dictum that translation is « the art of failure » by engaging in a thick translation and a creative transposition of a short poem in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim. I begin with reflections on recent discussions in anthropology on translation and voice – both of which will be relevant to the argument advanced in my discussion of Jim’s poem. I then work through a transcript of an interview with Jim about his poetry. I then engage in a creative transposition, or more precisely a failure, of the poem, and engage in a bit of exegesis and philology about the poem. The goal is to bring a concern with voice into dialogue with a concern with theorizations of translation. Mostly, though, this article is a contemplative exercise in the art of failure and in attending to the value of such an intellectual and aesthetic endeavor. |
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| ISSN: | 0037-9174 1957-7842 |