Nazmi Ağıl
Koç University
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Department of English Language and Comparative Literature
Sarıyer- Istanbul / TURKEY
The (He)art of Translation and the Audience
The two important names of English Literature, Geoffrey Chaucer and Alexander
Pope wrote in different time slices, from different cultures and for different audiences.
Therefore, The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer and The Rape of the Lock by Pope force their
translators to always keep in mind their distinct qualities and to apply the suitable translation
strategies. Such goading also decides if the translator will be a common laborer, who submits
to his master, the poet, and works in servile obedience to the laws of loyalty trying to carry
every brick of utterance, and as intact as possible, or if he will be a master-builder himself and
in full confidence in his skill, will cut and shape, and sometimes crush and re-mould the
bricks according to his judgment, and thus make his own contribution to the ever-rising
Tower of Babel.
I translated the two texts into Turkish and I experienced both of these feelings. While I
was translating The Canterbury Tales I felt my creativity wildly whipped and almost
becoming a Turkish Chaucer, I used all my poetic license to reconstruct the tales in my native
tongue. But throughout the translation of The Rape of the Lock, I often felt a restraint on my
powers and I paid attention to not over-assert myself. In other words, with Chaucer I felt
myself both as a translator and an original poet, whereas with Pope, I felt I was only the
former. And today, I want to share with you these two experiences. I will tell you about the
criteria that guided my decision-making both before and during the translation process of the
two works and I will give examples of how much freedom I used with The Canterbury Tales
and to what effect.
As I saw it, before I embarked upon that exciting work, there were three factors that
provoked a creative translation in The Canterbury Tales: The form and the content, the self
portrait of the author drawn in the tales, and most importantly, the intended audience, both of
Chaucer and mine. One of the most conspicuous aspects of the tales is the rich variety of their
subjects and fearing that some elite readers may feel annoyed by the crude narration of the
drunk miller Chaucer says:
And therefore, whoso list it nat yheere, / Turne ove the leef and chese another tale
Since as Auden says, the translator too is first and foremost a reader himself, during the
translation I enjoyed this freedom of choice Chaucer gives and started to translate the tales
from the most entertaining ones, which also happened to be the ones that allowed for more
playfulness with language due to their loose subject matter, and the carefree manners of their
narrators. I believe such free play warmed me up and sharpened my skills for the more
serious and high tuned tales that required more fidelity.
Another aspect of The Canterbury Tales is that they are stories already circulating
among the people rather than being Chaucer’s unique creation, except for “The Pardoner’s
Tale” which is attributed to Chaucer’s genius. Because no race on earth is completely
independent from others, and because people passed, though at varying times, through similar
experiences and shared similar values, I never felt alien to the characters or to the events
Chaucer tells about. When I looked in the sources of my native tongue, I noticed a treasury of
folk tales and as rich a tradition of telling stories as Chaucer’s. I observed how the two people
acted and reacted in similar ways. This treasure helped me tune my narration to the Turkish
ear.
As for how Chaucer presents himself in the tales, and what it means in terms of the
translator’s freedom: For centuries translation has been regarded as a secondary act. That is
why Valerie Labrauld describes the translator as a beggar at church door. (Steiner 284) But, a
person who will convey a text with all its beauty and richness into another language has to
have a high image of himself, must see himself as talented as the original writer, and harbor in
himself no tiny trait of inferiority complex. If the original writer is one whose greatness has
been approved by each passing century, the translator’s task becomes more straining. And at
this point, the best encouragement is, no doubt, the one that comes from the original writer of
course. Chaucer, who himself translated widely from French, must know the psychology of
translating for he draws a very humble portrait of himself as a narrator:
Also I prey yow to foryeve it me, / Al have not set folk in hir degree/ Heere in this tale, as that
they should stonde,/ My wit is short, ye may wel understonde.
And indeed, Chaucer the pilgrim will prove a complete failure when he attempts to tell
the tale of Sir Topaz and will have to quit his account upon being harshly chastised by the
Host. Considering the problems the original writer creates for the translator, it would not be
wrong to imagine that the latter has enough reasons to hate the former, but interestingly, in
successful translations there is often a sweet discourse between them. And Chaucer’s portrait
as drawn by the Host shows him as a man whom it is easy to get along with:
Now war yow, sires, and let this man have place!/ He in the waast is shape as wel as I;/This
were a popet in an arm t’nbrace/ for any woman, small and fair of face./ He semeth elvyssh
by his countenance,/ for unto no wight do he daliaunce.
The last aspect of the Canterbury tales that provokes the translator for a freer rendering
is Chaucer’s audience. As is well known, in those days the number of the literate people were
very few and these tales were rather told or read out loud around a fire to a group of listeners
just like the folk tales in every culture. Today, of course, almost everyone can read, and it is
impossible to find the counterpart of Chaucer’s audience yet, I thought the Turkish version
could be so levelled that it appealed to a similar taste. I did not know who read the tales in
England in the modern times, but it is true that in Turkey, they were known only in the
academic circles, who studied or taught it as part of an English literature course… which,
seemed to me an injustice to Chaucer. Then I would aim at the nonacademic readers, who did
not speak English or could not read the English texts in their original. So asked myself, like
Dryden: “If Chaucer were a Turk how would he write?” and tried to find the answer in my
practice. When I look now I see that I generally played with the proverbs, sometimes I
supplied their equals in Turkish and sometimes I created a new one from old ones and I used
a lot of idiomatic language, which I think suited to my purpose as they are the stock elements
of the language of the common people.
Here are some examples: The words addressed to Cupid “that wold no felawe with
thee” (line1624) is beautifully expressed in Turkish with a proverb that says “two cocks
cannot live peacefully in one garbage,” so I used that. My second example is to do with
Chaucer’s lines from the Pardoner’s Tale : “Their drunkenness regnet in any route/There is no
conseil hid withouten doute.” We have two proverbs that can be used for each of these lines.
A word by word translation of the first is “wine will not stay as it is in a bottle” and the other
is “A running water does not keep dirt.” I combined the two with a slight change, saying:
“wine will not stay as it is in a bottle” and “Running wine does not keep secrets.” Chaucer
says “In elde is both wisdom and usage” and we ask a rhetorical question “who knows more,
one who lived long or who has seen many places? ” by which we mean “of course, the latter
knows more.” Then, when I said “one who lived long knows more” in Turkish, I was doing
something new, surprising my accustomed readers, which Chaucer did not actually mean to
do. So this I believe is my humble contribution to the text.
Similar changes can be done with the idioms too, to the effect that the translated text is
richer. For example, in the Miller’s Tale, the poor carpenter cannot convince the people about
the wrong his wife and Nicholas the student did to him, “ It was for noght, no man his reason
herde” instead of a literal rendering of this, I preferred the Turkish idiom “ağzıyla kuş
tutmak” which is used to imply that a work is too hard, and which can be translated as “to
catch birds with his mouth” but then I also made it harder by adding “and eat with his nose” I
confess, I added this for the sake of rhyme, but it somehow became functional, because
translation is a two way act and sometimes the original also gains something when translated.
For example, in The Knight’s Tale, Palamon is caught in the tournament “But all for noght, he
was brought to the stake/ his hardy herte myghte hym helpe naught.” Here I used the Turkish
idiom (“eli kolu bağlı olmak,”) “to have one’s hands and arms tied” which, besides serving to
tell that Palamon was captured, also expresses that there is nothing he can do.
Again in the Miller’s tale, where Nicholas and Alison go to bed: “Down of laddre
stalked Nicholay,/ And Alison ful softe adoun she spedde; / Withouten words mo they goon to
bede. / Ther as the carpenter is wont to lye, / There was this revel and the melodye”
Just to give you a sense of how it sounds in Turkish I want to read it all :
“Bu arada süzülüp inen delikanlı ve kadın/ tek kelime etmeden, nefeslerini tuta tuta,/ Parmak
uçlarında koşuştular alt kata/ Marangozun yatağı yataklık etti o gece/ Bambaşka bir cümbüşe
ve başladı eğlence.” Here instead of translating “they goon to bede” literally I used an idiom
which means both to “literally serve as a bed” and “to help and abet a criminal.” Thus in the
Turkish version apart from the surface meaning, the forbidden side of the affair is also
punctuated and the text became more allusive.
My final example again comes from the Miller’s Tale. You know remember how
Absalon kissed the hind part of Alison. At the end of the tale, when telling how each was
punished, I said “Absolon da almıştı ağzının payını” that is “he had got his mouths share”
which meant both how he was punished and refers to the actual unlucky act.
The Canterbury tales also includes many references to well known utterances by some
well known figures or literary works, so in my translation I thought it would be proper if I
also used words that everyone had heard and that had become a by word in everyone’s
mouth.For example in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale Chantecleer sings the song “my life is faren in
londe!” and I supplied for this a line from a very famous song that says “Now you are far
away and my heart is full of longing” “Şimdi uzaklardasın gönül hicranla doldu.” And in The
Squire’s Tale, a hawk says that in his childhood he was so happy that “no thyinge eyled me”
which immediately calls to mind a line from one of our most famous poets Orhan Veli:
“Çocuk gönlüm kaygılardan azade” or “My child’s heart free from all worries.” Similarly, I
had the Friar speak in the words of another famous poet, Mehmet Akif, the Friar says
“Herketh this word! Bethwar, as in this cas” for which I supplied a line from our national
anthem, “Friend, don’t you ignore these lands you step on as mere dust,” which with a little
change became “Don’t’you ignore these words as mere fiction.” Thus, the gap between the
epic tone of the national anthem and the friar’s story added funny tone to the story. And
lastly, in “The Prologue,” Chaucer describes the Parson as a shepherd who does not leave his
herd and go to London to make more money, a caring one who visits his congregation not
minding the weather is fair or foul. “But he lefte nat, for reyn ne thunder,/ upon his feet and in
his hand a staff”. One of our ex prime ministers Suleyman Demirel was called Suleyman the
Shepherd and when he was told that students were going to walk in the streets in protest
against the government, he is known to say “Let them walk, roads will not worn out by
walking upon” in the rest of the line after “upon his feet,” I could not help adding his words,
though in a positive context this time. Similarly, the following lines that come from the
Miller’s Tale are not in the original and my reasons to add them are either to find a rhyme, to
strengthen a meaning that sounded a bit weak in Turkish or to bring a story to its closure:
about Nicholas’s fart “there was neither rhythm in this sound, nor measure or accord.” “Ne
ahenk vardı bu seste, ne düzen ne de akort” and about the old cuckolded carpenter “You
foolish carpenter, long live with your mind.” “Vay şaşkaloz marangoz, hay aklınla bin yaşa.”
Not in abundance, but there is a few more of such additions in the whole book but most them
are impossible to translate into English, so these two shall suffice.
Just to provide a comparison, I will relate my experience with Pope’s “The Rape of the
Lock.” It was published in 1717 and named after a real event. A young lord cuts a lock from a
young lady’s hair which then leads to a quarrel between their families. Upon request
Alexander Pope writes the poem in order to show that the event is indeed funny and the
ensuing quarrel is unnecessary. So the story is about the highest class of the society and its
readers are limited with the two well educated royal families and their close friends. In fact,
the heroin, Lady Arabella Fermor initially enjoys the poem very much but gets angry when
Pope publishes it. Naturally then, there abounds in the poem, references to particular people
and events that are familiar to its small audience but quite foreign to the Turkish readers of
our time. So its target readers would mainly be the philology students who have to study the
text but find the English version difficult to understand. This consideration led me to stay
loyal to Pope’s as much as possible and pay special attention to make my couplets match his. .
Another consideration was that The Rape of the Lock is a mock heroic poem, which often
borrows from the epic tradition in order to provide the readers a comparison between the
serious issues of the past epics and the triviality of the matter at hand. That is why I thought
my translation must remind the philology students these older works, they already heard of,
rather than leading them to Turkish epic poems, even if I could find some well fitting ones. A
further point to keep in mind was that Pope wrote in what is called The Age of Reason, when
Newton discovered the laws of the universe and Defoe created his Robinson Crusoe who
ruled over the wild nature with his scientific mind. A similar desire to rule over the language
was also among the concerns of the age. Hence, large dictionaries were prepared aiming at the
utmost lexical precision. That is, being the most representative poet of his time Pope must
have written his poem with his intellect and not let himself drift in the flow of emotions or in
a free association of words. This attitude I thought required the same sober mind on the part
of the translator too, who would therefore not stray away from the precincts defined by the
original poet. As for the last factor that shaped my rendering of The rape of the Lock as a
more loyal to the original is again related to the personality of its poet. It is certainly helpful
if the translator manages to identify himself with the poet, goes into his personality and write
from there, as if he is writing a poem of his own. Perhaps due to different natures, this was not
easy to do with Pope, for unlike the friendly portrait of Chaucer, Pope is drawn in literary
history as someone who, because of the inferiority complex left from a childhood disease, had
a biting tongue which he put into use in his constant quarrels with almost everyone around.
To conclude my talk, I hope I have made it clear with my authentic experience of translating
Chaucer and Pope that there are some points to consider before an act of literary translation:
These are, the encouragement that comes from the textual elements, from the portrayal of the
author, and the audience both of the author and the translator. This last one I deem the most
important as only after considering this, the translator will be led to make use of the previous
two and this will decide how much freedom he will enjoy in his task.