In Real Time

Abstract

Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse and I have worked together for more than eight years translating Sorani Kurdish poets of the eighteen hundreds. We’ve experimented with poets, approaches to translations, and readings of literary works. The pedagogical effects of co-translation over the years created gradual, significant changes in my learning; it gave me a formative education in literature and literary translation. This project informed my knowledge of how language interacts in the Kurdish regions of Iraq and what these interactions create. The educational system of the eighteen hundreds being Arabic and religious, the literary influence traveling in all directions across Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and all the dialects and sub-dialects in between, built a very complex creative impetus for the poetry at the time that was unrestricted in literary influence and restricted in language and form. By reading these poems, we asked ourselves what kind of restrictions the writers placed upon themselves and whether to follow or defy those restrictions. When texts create an interactive world like this, they are open to new and changing interpretations as well as translations. The relationship Alana and I have built together working with these texts is constantly redefining the collaborative nature inherent in the literature and the educational nature inherent in co-translation. Translating alone is often a silent practice, at least for the beginning stages of translation. But the one clear distinction in our work together is that it starts with talking, and discussion is the main drive. Speaking in English starts the translation process, and it’s the act of speaking that not only amplifies the experience but also makes it educational. Hearing our minds while thinking, hearing thoughts formulate readings, transforms the drift of ideas in a mental effort into an embodied practice. We speak about the experience and at the same time experience the speaking. Sound is an essential device in the form and meaning of the poems we’re translating. We read the poems to each other and listen to our impressions on what the sounds are doing in each language. We transfer the sound from the text into the narrative of our discussions to assess how it travels back to us, in sensations and in images. In one instance of translating Nali, an eighteenth-century poet, when discussing a poem dedicated to his “room,” it became very clear that the contrast between the sound of words and the overall tone of the poem that Nali creates is at the core of understanding and recreating the poem. The original Arabic title hujra signifies a space, but its purpose varies from one region to another. This room was given to poets for spiritual practice and religious education and became a permanent space for their teachings, reflections, and writings, an intimate space that was solitary and communal at the same time depending on the hour of the day. Sometimes, in the poets’ home cities, the rooms became a permanent, personal space. But there were always other temporary rooms poets stayed in when traveling to teach or study for a period of time. The critical voice in this poem can be read as an indication of which type of room it is; the sound can also be a play of a language that is humorous in meaning and serious in tone. There are many lines scattered across Nali’s poems that speak to a deep attachment to his room; but in this example, the room is described as a “cage” that traps him with “spider’s warp and weft,” its roof is “threadbare as old cradle blankets,” in summer there is no shade and so “Chameleons, sun-worshippers, mass” in the room, in winter it’s so cold that “It’s not a room. Call it a chill slipped between four walls.” It floods with rainwater and becomes a “mill” of snow “flour.” During hail, everyone runs to “the doctor’s / With their hems rolled up and their heads split open.” We set out the tone of the poem right from the beginning: TRANSLATION REVIEW 2023, VOL. 115, NO. 1, 3–5 https://doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2023.2179290