This past summer I was given Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire in its Greek incarnation - Ο Έρωτας θα ανατείλει ξανά. When I first opened the package and saw the title - Love Will Rise Again - I tried not to cringe at what on first look seemed like a melodramatic Greek romance novel. I wanted to seem positive as Anastasia was the gift-giver. (Her very first gift to me had the following inscription on the inside cover of the book: …To the most smiling-faced person in the world.) Anyway, I saw the author’s name quite quickly and soon understood which book it was. I was happily relieved, but still continued to be annoyed with the title choice.

I don’t know the book yet, but I understand there is indeed a great love story here. I’ve read the Guardian review, which begins: “…father and son share one secret, one love, which by the end of the book will come to appear redemptive.” And read Banville’s New York Times review in which he said about Hazzard, “She believes in love — indeed, she believes in Love.”

Anyway, I’ve been putting off reading the novel in Greek because I imagined I may end up reading some second-rate version of the real novel, which exists out there, in ENGLISH, a language which just happens to be my very own language. I feel I should be reading it in English. Hazzard, like myself, was born in Australia and, obviously, writes in English. And I was going to read her in Greek? But Anastasia asked me about it recently and I said it’s up next.

I’ve read almost as many books in translation as I have read books in original English. But I’ve never read a book in translation when it was originally written in English. I mean, obviously one only reads books in translation when one does not have access to the original language, unless one is doing it for work or study, I imagine. Anyway, I imagine that one more easily accepts a translation when one cannot refer back to the original. When the original is unattainable because one cannot understand it.

Anyway, last night I took the book to bed with me. I procrastinated. I looked at the back cover. Looked at Hazzard’s photograph. Read over her bio again. Asked Panos if he knew the translator. Looked at the bookmark slipped into the book by the bookseller.

Then I turned to Part One and Chapter One and began reading. But I approached the text with suspicion.

And I began to think. And I lost track of the words on the page. I was talking - silently, of course - to myself: Am I really about to begin reading Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire? Or am I about to read some other text? I answered myself: This is the problem and sheer beauty of translation, isn’t it? A translation is always, necessarily, a complete and original text. I posed another question: What unites The Great Fire with Ο Έρωτας θα ανατείλει ξανά? And I answered it with another question: Is it some core idea or motivation that remains intact despite the vehicle that tells the story? Is it the plot that remains the same? I was only certain of one thing: It isn’t word-choice, the way a sentence is built, how it begins, ends. That changes. One language cannot replicate the structure of another. More than that. Any retelling of Hazzard’s The Great Fire even in English would be different. If just one word changes in a sentence, everything has changed. Rhythm, tone, pace, mood, idea.

This morning, having read, and enjoyed, the first few Greek Hazzard pages in bed last night, I felt the overwhelming urge to locate an excerpt online and COMPARE the real version to this inferior translation. I could not fight the urge, I could not. I had to find Hazzard’s English.

But I made a pact with myself.

I would try to translate what I’d read into the English that I was translating the text back into so that I could process it. (I still sometimes do that with Greek - I translate words into English because I have a more intimate relationship, I guess, with English and because of that I feel I understand the words better.)
So I begin this.

This exercise is just an exercise. I am madly curious about translation (still translating poems by Karyotakis and have begun to do Maria Polydouri) and this is just another peek into the labyrinth, because it really is a labyrinth, of translation.

Here goes:

Note:

Greek text is in black.

My translation into English is in green.

Hazzard’s original text is in blue.

Comments are in italics.

Ξεκίνισαν.

They began.

Now they were starting.

Comment: The Greek translation yields the simple past. I wonder, why this choice? Why not - Τώρα ξεκινάγανε, which in my limited Greek does make everything just as immediate, as present, as happening-now, as Hazzard’s opening.

Το τρένο ήταν ασφυκτικά γεμάτο από κόσμο, μια ανάσα όλοι.

The train was crammed to suffocation with people, everyone, a single breath.

Finality ran through the train, an exhalation.

Comment: This is so interesting because Hazzard doesn’t mention how crammed the train is with people. “Finality ran through the train” is missing in the Greek; “an exhalation” is attempted with the “everyone being a single breath.”

Φωνές, σφυρίγματα, και τα ουρλιαχτά των καθυστερημένων έσκιζαν τον αέρα.

Voices, whistles, and shrieks of the latecomers cut the air.

There were thuds, hoots, whistles, and the shrieks of late arrivals.

Comments: No thuds. Thud is γδούπo. I don’t know if there’s a plural. Maybe that’s why. And why the addition of “cutting the air”?

Οι ανακοινώσεις από το μεγάφωνο στα αμερικανικά και τα ιαπωνικά ήταν ακατανόητες.

The announcements from the megaphone were incomprehensible in American and Japanese.

From a megaphone, announcements were incomprehensible in American and Japanese.

Comment: nothing wrong with this, but just curious about the order. To put the Greek into Hazzard’s order it would go: Από το μεγάφωνο, οι ανακοινώσεις ήταν ακατανόητες στα αμερικανικά και τα ιαπωνικά.

Προτού καν κινηθεί το τρέvο, τα πρόσωπα στην αποβάθρα είχαν πάρει τη χαρακτηριστική έκφραση εκείνων που μένουν πίσω.

Before the train even begins to move the faces on the platform had taken on the characteristic expression of those who a left behind.

Before the train had moved at all, the platform faces receded into the expression of those who remain.

I like the the movement of “receded” which anticipates the movement of the train away from the station, but this is missing in the Greek. From my reading, anyway.

Ο Λιθ κάθισε δίπλα σε ένα παράθυρο.

Leith sat beside a window.

Leith sat by a window,

Το σώμα του ακολουθούσε υπάκουα το ρυθμό της ατσμομηχανής καθώς έμπαιναν στο τούνελ.

His body obediently followed the rhythm of the steam engine as they entered the tunnel.

…his body submissively chugging as they got under way.

Σε λίγο, θα διαπίστωνε ότι η βροχή συνέχιζε να πέφτει στα καμένα περίχωρα του Τόκιο, πλημμυρίζοντας ακόμα και το τρέvο με μια απαίσια μυρωδιά στάχτης.

In a little while, he would discover that the rain continued to fall on the burnt outskirts of Tokyo, flooding even the train with an awful smell of ash.

He would presently see that rain continued to fall on the charred suburbs of Tokyo, raising, even within the train, a spectral odour of cinders.

Comment: Here we get burnt - καμένα - instead of charred - καρβουνιασμένα - and awful instead of spectral. The distance between burnt and charred is less than the distance between awful and spectral. Though, of course, for a writer burnt and charred are COMPLETELY different. But this is the case for a writer writing in English. Again, everything changes in translation. One language cannot always accommodate the idiosyncrasies of another. But are the above two examples the best possible choices? I guess it is ultimately up to the translator. I guess the Greek version is some sort of a joint writing project between two people, the writer and the translator.In the Greek version the first paragraph ends here, but Hazzard is already near the end of her second paragraph, which she ends with the following sentence (In the Greek, this sentence begins paragraph two):

Meanwhile, he was examining a photograph of his father. Aldred Leith was holding a book in his right hand — not reading, but looking at a likeness of his father on the back cover.

To be continued…

Maybe.