MCLC: Poetry translation forum (3)

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Poetry translation forum (3)
I doubt anyone on this list is unaware of the German-speaking world’s tradition of powerful and encyclopedic scholarship, and since the GT article says there were participants from Germany, there doesn’t seem to have been any slight on the part of the conference organizers. What is Professor Kubin reacting to?  The status of English as the modern Koine? If he wants to denounce cultural imperialism, he can take a number and wait his turn. In the meantime I hope Martin Winter will keep sharing links to his elegant German translations (as well as his elegant English ones), for that will more effectively remind us of the riches of this language and its openness to the rest of the world.
Professor Fiskesjö’s story about the apparently willful mistranslation of Södergran’s line, “Life is, to miss out on that one and only opportunity” is puzzling as well as painful.  Painful, because Södergran found lovely words for a poignant observation.  Puzzling, because it is one that I would have expected Chinese readers (and editors) to grasp with empathy. Through the gaokao and similar experiences, few Chinese grow up expecting they will get second chances.  In an intensely competitive environment, they know what it means to miss one's opportunity. Perhaps the editor felt that anything other than success does not deserve to be called "life"?
Finally, if I may offer my own reaction, this Global Times piece did not strike me as chauvinistic or propagandistic, but simply as unbearably vapid and jejune. Almost all the cultural pieces reprinted from GT strike me that way.
A. E. Clark <aec at raggedbanner.com>
by denton.2 at osu.edu on April 27, 2016
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