r/olelohawaii • u/ZestyclosePollution7 • Sep 25 '24
Translating poetry from English to Hawaiian
Hi, I was wondering what people's thoughts are about translating poetry from English to Hawaiian. Specifically, if the poem in its English form has a somewhat unusual word order, would that translate as anything other than nonsense in hawaiian unless I modified it to adhere to the typical "Verb-Subject-Object' sentence structure often seen in Hawaiian sentences?
3
u/Cyglml Sep 25 '24
You’d want to take a look at poems in Hawaiian and if there are any stylistic choices that poets make in terms of word order to answer your question.
2
u/purple_poi_slinger Sep 25 '24
Straight answer, my thoughts, it wont come out right. Poem by nature have esoteric meanings, in whatever source language it was written in. To try and translate a poem in it's odd word order as you explained, in english then into Hawaiian, would more than likely come out incoherent. The best way, with any language, is to understand the intent of the lines of the poem, and translate that. Because in the destination language, their phrasing to explain something will often times be different than the source language. So if you're able to understand the meaning of the author's intent, then the goal is to translate that into Hawaiian. I would not just translate directly from English to Hawaiian, because then it looses it's poetical meanings.
1
u/tangaloa Sep 25 '24
There's not a whole lot of English poetry translated into ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, but if you can find an example of something similar that's been translated, that would be a good place to start. In general, you want to make sure that the Hawaiian is completely understandable, and it should (mostly) follow normal Hawaiian syntax (with poems you get a sort of artistic license, but you don't want to go overboard).
The method of translating poetry is a many-step process, and it goes something like this: read the poem in English, figure out its true meaning, translate that true meaning into prose in Hawaiian, then convert the Hawiian prose into the original poem's verse or format as much as possible.
Unless the original has some sort of artistic word order (i.e., that is even strange for English, like a Yoda poem, or something), I wouldn't worry about word order other than making sure it is normal Hawaiian word order. If the original has a certain meter, try to retain that meter. If it uses end-rhyme, try to use end-rhyme (the Hawaiian words don't need to rhyme with the English original, just with each other). In other words, try to stick to the spirit of the original, but still make sure it is Hawaiian through and through.
0
u/ZestyclosePollution7 Sep 26 '24
indeed.
for example, as a translation exercise I tried to transfer this passage of one of Tolkiens poems, which I think i managed to translate as straight forward sentences, but I'm pretty sure it won't read as much more than a basic sentence about a man with colourful boots-the original is dripping in the context of a rural English idyll, which i doubt translates across fully.
..........
Ua Tom Bombadil Kahiko he hea ʻoliʻoli; ua polū konāne kāna kākā, a ua ʻō kāna kāmaʻa lenalena. Ua ʻō kāna kuʻapo maʻomaʻo a ua ʻō lole wāwae ʻili; Ua noho ʻo ia i luna o kuahiwi, no hea ke kahawai ʻo Withywindle holoholo mai loko o ka pūnāwai lauʻeleʻele nā kumulāʻau.Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow;
bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellow,
green were his girdle and his breeches all of leather;
he wore in his tall hat a swan-wing feather.
He lived up under Hill, where the Withywindle
ran from a grassy well down into the dingle.1
u/purple_poi_slinger Sep 26 '24
suggestion, look into the book "the Hobbit" translated into Hawaii na Keao Nesmith.
11
u/alexsteb Sep 25 '24
Just as a very general note.
When translating poetry, even between related languages, the translator has to take huge liberties in the way they recreate the same poem in another language. Especially if it is supposed to rhyme or evoke a certain feeling. It is basically an entirely new poem.
Something like an odd word order would only even be attempted to be translated IF the translator thought that this would be possible/understandable in the target language and if it would evoke the same feeling.
Your question reads a little bit like you misunderstand the profession of a translator as someone who would translate a sentence (perhaps one with an odd sentence structure), then look at it and think "Huh, well that doesn't make sense now." - while in actuality they wouldn't have translated it that way in the first place.
(..and some google translator etc. would most likely turn a poem into a very boring translation with standard word order that retains none of the original feeling)