Gained In Translation

Computer based language translation is always good for a few laughs, but I've never been the subject of the original text before, so I thought I'd share what happens when Germans and Italians write about me.

What have I learned from this? I have learned that I am The Macher who writes yellow and pumps benzine. I'm sure this makes a lot more sense in the original languages, but I'm still planning on taking my new-found powers on board. Except maybe the bit about writing yellow. Unless I can find some snow.

This frippery leads me nicely onto the subject of translation of fiction. I'm working my way through the first issue of Murdaland and the stories translated from Spanish to English both exhibit a similar quirkiness that I've seen before.

Months ago now, I read Haruki Murakami's HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD. Even though it was originally in Japanese, the Spanish short stories from Murdaland have the same wonderful inconsistencies. I don't think this has anything to do with the quality of the translation, but there are definite artefacts when thoughts are shifted into a different culture and system of thinking.

I say system of thinking because I'm of the opinion that each language has a base set of assumptions that affect every thought made through that language. Some languages attach gender to inanimate objects, some don't have an equivalent word for 'self-esteem', some have many words to describe different types of snow, some only have one word for love.

While meaning can be lost in translation, something else can happen too. A well-turned phrase, a combination of words that would not normally exist in English can bring a smile to your face or create a poetic rhythm that has its own charm. The foreignness of the culture or the thinking behind the writing is what makes it so fresh.

But it doesn't always work and I've found that there are passages that I zoom through with glee then get pulled up short when a joke or idea doesn't translate well to English. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if the writer wrote in English from the beginning. But like Douglas Adam's poet who wrote on leaves and whose work was ruined when time travellers gave him liquid paper, I doubt the final work would have the same originality.

Something lost, but something gained. I might go read some Arnaldur Indridason right now.

Oh, So NOW It's In Fashion

Went to the exhibition over a year ago, bought the book around the same time, love to sniff through the pages every so often. Even spent the last six months writing most of a novel inspired by the photos, but now that Peter Doyle's CITY OF SHADOWS has been published overseas I really did need someone like Karl Lagerfeld to tell me the book was good.

Amazing what passes for news these days. If fame, fortune or good looks aren't attached to something, it's as if it isn't even valid.

Article and photo from the Sydney Morning Herald

Duende

A couple of years ago, I came across the Spanish word, duende. At the time I took it to translate into something like: "the presence of the dark understanding of death." This concept stuck with me, and it's something I've been trying to achieve in my writing ever since.

Looking through the notes on my current novel, I saw this quote again and decided to look it up. Almost like the word 'noir' it is not quite definable and yet we all seem to know instinctively whether something is 'noir' or not.

From Wikipedia, "Duende is either a mythological character, or difficult-to-define phrase used in the Spanish arts, including performing arts." The mythological character sometimes appears as a fairy or goblin, like the grumbly fellow in the picture, but I'm more interested in the other definition.

Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish artist of a number of disciplines, gave a lecture in 1934 called Theory and Play of the Duende. If you follow the link and read the text, you'll find that even his understanding of this term seems somewhat vague.

Why am I interested in duende?

Art is such an inexplicable thing that I cannot help wanting to find some structure or method behind it, with the hope that there must be more to the seemingly random process of creativity. What makes great art? Various people over the centuries have come up with their own definitions and attributes, but I think that art can be defined like this:

"Goethe, who, in effect, defined the duende when he said, speaking of Paganini: 'A mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain.'"

Which of course doesn't help me or any other artist when it comes to our struggle. I use the word struggle because, for me, pulling out every word of every story is exactly that. Lorca's lecture used it as well: "The duende, then, is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept."

Sometimes I look at concepts like duende as mentors, guides in the process of creating art. In the isolating world of the writer, it can be hard to find a real-life mentor, and of all the arts it seems to be the one in which we must all walk the path alone. Sometimes, though, a kind word from a respected peer or a line of inspiration can give the learning process a gentle shove.

In October 2005, I wrote a review of a concert by Diamanda Galas. She stumbled across it and asked me for permission to use the review as promotional material. We emailed back and forth some, and one thing she said struck something within me, something linked to duende.

She said: "Fear is your business."

At the time, it wasn't. At least I didn't think so. I was having fun writing a self-indulgent, silly romp through my own corner of the P.I. universe. But that phrase stuck in the soil of my mind and spread its thin tendrils throughout my views on writing and art.

There's one last component of my personal definition of duende that comes from the review I wrote: "The old bluesman, Skip James ... would tell the audience that his music existed solely to inspire dread. It was not for dancing." I've seen a video of Skip James in action and you can see this in the faces of the people standing around him, watching him belt out his most famous tune, Devil Got My Woman.

Duende, like all words that attempt to define the indefinable, is for me a combination of fear, dread, and death. But even that seems to me to be too thin a definition. I can only hope that, in the future, duende will come across in my writing and that will be explanation enough.