3.3.1 Verse passages
3.3.1.1 Hervey and Higgins’s matrices
Hervey and Higgins’s schema of textual matrices is a top-down approach, taking text-type and context as starting points for discussing translation problems and strategies. The five matrices of features are proposed to help the translator ask and answer a series of questions that apply to any text given for translation (Hervey and Higgins, 2002, p. 2). This bottom-up approach can also be adopted for the analysis of the translated text. The most relevant matrix for the analysis of verse passages found in The Tale of Khun Chang Kun Phaen is the formal matrix at phonic/graphic level. Other matrices, namely genre matrix, cultural matrix, semantic matrix and varietal matrix are pertinent but cannot be applied to the analysis of all verse passages. For instance, the semantic matrix deals with connotative meanings while the cultural matrix is more relevant to the analysis of the key CSIs. The varietal matrix in particular is relevant to four verse passages, ST 19, ST 20, ST 21, and ST 22 (see Appendix). The use of dialects will be investigated when the ST is analysed at phonic level in Section 4.2.1.4. Before the formal matrix is discussed in detail, the genre matrix will be introduced in this chapter while the application of the formal matrix will be shown in Chapter 4.
Hervey and Higgins (ibid., p. 57) state that genre is important when a translator tries to decide a translation strategy because the translator has to answer the questions about the kind of text the ST belongs to and the kind of text the TT should be. They propose five broad genre-types: empirical genres, philosophical genres, religious genres, persuasive genres and literary genres (ibid., pp. 59-60).
Knowing the genre-type of the ST will lead the translator to ask a vital strategic question: “What are the salient features of the ST?” Once the translator finds the genre-specific characteristics that require the special attention, the translator has to decide on the genre-specific features the TT should have (ibid., p. 61). The verse passages are taken from KCKP, an epic poem belonging to literary genre-type.
When the translators decided to translate verse into verse, I posit that they would undoubtedly pay special attention to the genre-specific features because they had to decide on which poetic form they would opt for. The chosen form will have to serve the translators’ attempt to recreate in a target language the source poem’s semantic content and its poetic/stylistic form.
Apart from genre-types, Hervey and Higgins also separate the texts into oral and written. They point out that “an awareness of the properties of oral texts is a necessary starting point for translating an oral ST into an oral TT” (ibid., p. 62). The Thai KCKP is suitable for oral performance and silent reading. The translators of this epic poem started with a written script and produced a TT suitable for silent reading, not for oral performance as evidenced in the TT that is mainly rendered into prose. The translators expressed their awareness of the oral properties of KCKP and attempted to retain these properties when they could (personal communication, January 29, 2014). From Robert Fitzgerald’s famous translations of the Iliad (1974) and the Odyssey (1961), Baker says he noticed that Fitzgerald
“had great fun with the way he did these pieces, very nice adjectives […]. It’s obviously being true to the form” (personal communication, January 29, 2014). Baker added that in the more modern translations of Greek poems the translators tended to “muddy” the oral properties of the text, unlike Fitzgerald (ibid.). The translators did not set out to translate the oral-style ST into an oral TT;
nonetheless, part of their translation strategy seems to be informed by an awareness of the properties of texts with oral origins.
With reference to the formal matrix, Hervey and Higgins borrow some fundamental notions from linguistics, hierarchically ordered series of six levels of textual variables, in assessing formal properties of texts. They propose six layers of textual variables: (i) phonic/graphic level, (ii) prosodic level, (iii) grammatical level, (iv) sentential level, (v) discourse level and (vi) intertextual level (Hervey and Higgins, 2002, p. 5). A bottom-up approach, from phonic details to intertextual matters, is recommended and the text should be scanned level by level to see what textual variables of the ST are absent from the TT and vice versa (ibid., p. 76). We shall follow a similar procedure in our analysis of the translation methods employed by Baker and Pasuk.
Looking at a text on the phonic/graphic level of textual variables means to consider it as a sequence of sound-segments or phonemes and a sequence of letters or graphemes (ibid., p. 77). The repetition of sounds is classified for the analysis at this level into alliteration and assonance (ibid., p. 78).
Alliteration, assonance, and rhyme are exploited more in the less purely factual text, and the most obvious example is poetry (ibid.). The authors stress that marked phonic features have thematic and expressive functions, especially sound-symbolism, which utilises phonic echoes and affinities (ibid., pp.
78-79). They remark that to create textual effects the written texts also depend to some extent on their visual layout (ibid., p. 82). Hervey and Higgins elaborate on graphic level much less than the phonic level because they believe that “the shapes are less commonly a source of textual effects” (ibid.). This issue of visual effects will be discussed at length when the ST and the TT are analysed at graphic level in Section 4.2.2.2 and Section 4.3.2.2.
In carrying out textual analysis, the STs will be examined at the phonic level and graphic level respectively. At phonic level, four elements of the ST will be discussed: (i) metres, (ii) prominence and deviance, (iii) lineation and (iv) dialects. At graphic level, two aspects: (i) presentation and (ii) effects of the ST, will be examined. The TTs will also be examined at phonic level first and four features of twenty-four segments, all verse passages found in the translation, will be examined. These features are: (i) forms, (ii) rhyme-schemes, (iii) lineation, and (iv) compensation. At graphic level, the same two aspects: (i) presentation and (ii) effects of the TT, will be investigated.
One of the four elements of the ST to explore is ‘prominence and deviance’. ‘Prominence’ is defined as phenomenon of linguistic highlighting by which some linguistic features stand out and ‘deviance’ refers to the difference between the normal frequency of a feature and its frequency in the text or corpus (Leech and Short, 1981, p. 48). The outstanding linguistic features in Thai poetry will be discussed at length in Section 4.2.1.2.
Another element of the ST to examine is ‘lineation’. This term refers to division into lines (Lennard, 2005, p. 153) and relates to the question of whether the line is end-stopped, where a line-break is reinforced by a punctuation mark (ibid., p. 34) or enjambed (sense and/or syntax continues into the next line, couplet, or stanza) (ibid., p. 188). Line-breaks in klon paet (กลอนแปด), the ST’s form, will be addressed in Section 4.2.1.3.
The fourth element of the ST to be examined is dialects. In the schema of textual matrices, the varietal matrix is one of the five matrices Hervey and Higgins discuss (2002, pp. 161-167). They specify four types of speaker-related information that can be inferred from style, namely tonal register, social register, sociolect and dialect. Dialect is a language variety with features of accent, lexis, syntax and sentence-formation characteristic of a given region (ibid., p. 166). It is directly related to four verse
passages. The use of dialects as a feature of the ST should be taken into account because it relates to the decision to use or not to use TL dialectal features in the TT (ibid.).
The four features of the ST and the TT at phonic level are chosen because of their correlation. The metres and prominence and deviance of the STs directly relate to forms and rhyme-schemes of the TTs. Lineation has to be explored and explained for both the source and target texts to explicate the poetic conventions of the two semiotic systems. When dialects are used in the compositions, translating them, whether into verse or prose, requires some forms of compensation and these two aspects have to be examined hand in hand.
Hervey and Higgins’s formal matrix allows us to assess the formal properties and determine the salient features of the texts for comparison. To identify the forms the verse passages are cast into, Holmes’s work on the translation of verse form will complement the analysis of the textual outcome.
3.3.1.2 Holmes’s forms of verse translation
Holmes (1988, pp. 23-24) asserts that verse translation, “interpretative in intent”, “determinate in length and subject matter”, makes use of verse as its medium and “aspires to be a poem in its own right”, thereby creating a ‘metapoem’. The verse form to be used has to be made at an early stage because it will determine the nature and sequence of later decisions (ibid., p. 25).
Holmes does not specifically pinpoint that when a poem is translated into prose, the form is sacrificed for the sake of the content. However, his attitude is revealed when he judges prose translation to be a nil-form seeing as the translator ‘sidesteps’ the problem (ibid.). Many have argued for a translation of poetry into poetry. Translating German poetry into English, Paterson (2006, p. 65) calls his verse translation a ‘version’ that tries to be a poem in its own right while Scott (2000, p. 249) advocates the medium of ‘free verse’ for the translation of Baudelaire’s French poems into English.
Boase-Beier (2012, p. 480) asserts that only a small number of translators argue for a translation into prose with the implication of strict discipline in the rendering of meaning. Translating a lengthy narrative poem into prose may be dictated by the same consideration. The importance of meaning seems to exceed consideration of the shape and the pattern of the poem in view of the fact that Baker and Pasuk rendered the poem mostly into prose. However, as to not entirely ‘sidestep’ the problem of
translating poetry, they translated twenty-four segments into English verse forms, in which the contents are undeniably constricted into certain formal moulds. Baker and Pasuk read many translated poetic works in English before they began their translation project (personal communication, January 29, 2014). Their decision to partly reproduce both content and form coincides with Holmes’s translating practice and theoretical approach, that is to create a poetically valid target poem. When asked why certain segments were translated into poetic forms, Baker explained that they did so “to give the readers the idea that this is a poetic performance, that you are showing a poetic performance in place happening, to really, to signal that to the readers otherwise I thought people might miss it” (ibid.).
The forms of the twenty-four verse passages suggest that the translators did not concern themselves with choosing only one poetic form to cast all the chosen segments as Holmes suggests the translator do at an early stage. To retain poetic effects, Baker and Pasuk then translated those segments into many different forms, covering various kinds of metapoem, each of which will be described by the terms Holmes introduces.
Holmes (1988) proposes four traditional approaches to rendering a poem into a metapoem as follows:
(i) Mimetic form
The translator recreates the source poem’s semantic content and its poetic form by mimicking the source poem’s patterning in which the translator imitates the form of the original as best s/he can (ibid., p. 26). For instance, Baker and Pasuk use the ST form, klon paet (กลอนแปด), and its governing metre to translate the opening and closing paragraphs of the poem. This decision dictates the shape of the two verse passages, TT 1 and TT 23, and the shape itself may be a source of textual effects to be investigated in Section 4.3.2.2.
(ii) Analogical form
The translator who makes use of this form looks to the function of the original poem’s form within its poetic tradition, then seeks a form that fills a parallel function within the poetic tradition of the target language (ibid., p. 28). Holmes points out that some translators believe that the verse appropriate to the epic in English is blank verse (ibid.). To follow this approach, the Thai epic should then be translated into English blank verse. The majority of the verse passages in the TT are indeed cast into
an analogical form. These passages will be investigated whether blank verse is employed when the TT is analysed at phonic level in Section 4.3.1.1.
(iii) Organic form
The translator starts from the semantic material by allowing it to take its own unique poetic shape as the translation develops (ibid., p. 27). It is a new intrinsic form that is allowed to develop from the inward workings of the text itself (ibid., p. 28). Mimetic and analogical forms are form-derivative forms while organic form is a content-derivative form (ibid., p. 27). The distinguishing feature of this form is that the translator does not try to fit the content into existing forms. In this case, the translators would look beyond klon paet and blank verse to render the chosen segments and the end result would be a new form that Baker and Pasuk created.
(iv) Extraneous form
The translator translates the poem into a form that is not implicit in either the form or the content of the original (ibid., p. 26). Holmes calls this form a ‘deviant form’ since it does not derive from the original poem at all (ibid., p 27). However, in some cases, the extraneous form is an “older collateral of the organic form” in which the translator minimally conforms to the formal requirements of his or her poetic culture but still has the freedom to transfer the meaning of the poem (ibid., p. 28). Even though this form gives the translator more creative freedom to transfer the meaning of the poem than the other three, it is, however, not discussed by Holmes at length. Holmes quotes many examples of poems translated into mimetic and analogical forms but he only mentions that extraneous form is not a period form and has been constant across the years (ibid.).
When one passage in this translation is rendered into an extraneous form, it reveals the approach that is least favoured in the translation of the Thai-English direction (see Table 4.1 Verse forms chosen for verse passages). As a tradition of verse translation in the Thai-English direction is in early development phrase, the number of verse passages analysed is limited to twenty-four. The TT reader will be confronted with how to read the poems, scattered throughout the translation. Concomitant with an early development of a translation tradition, a rendering into English of a Thai poem into both prose and verse will undoubtedly challenge the TT reader to confront a different poetic convention.
The formal matrix informs us that the verse passages should be examined both phonically and graphically and in turn the approach the translators took for each verse passage will be revealed.
Holmes’s approaches are chosen because they are the most helpful and the most relevant categorisation of poetry translation into different verse forms from Thai into English. All twenty-four verse passages will be categorised according to the four approaches to help identify the translation patterns. Additionally, within some verse passages, there are terms that are specific to Thai culture;
and the translation procedures for these key cultural terms suggest an underlying ideological intervention and are the main concern in the following section.