De Tres escalones en la escalera de la escritura, de Helene Cixous/From Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by HC

This is what writing is: I
one language, I another language, and between the two, the line that makes them vibrate; writing forms a passageway between two shores/ Esto es lo que es la escritura: I
una lengua, I otra lengua, y entre las dos, la línea que las hace vibrar; escribir forma un pasaje entre dos orillas.

Ghost Opera by/de Mercedes Roffé

Mi versión de un poema de MR, de su libro La ópera fantasma que acabo de terminar de traducir. My translation of a poem by MR from her book Ghost Opera, which I just finished translating.

GHOST OPERA
(Tan Dun)


water
tremolo
kettledrum roll and
water
tremolo
drop
GONG
in the bosom / hollow of
water
tremolo
GONG
vibration expanding
into the mirror / hollow / kettledrum of
water
tremolo
GONG


Then Shakespeare
and Bach come
and talk
sitting face to face
before the hollow / kettledrum / of water
and light
like two solemn
Buddhas
they talk
and Shakespeare says: “We are such a stuff / as dreams are made on.”
“Fugue / Death fugue,” says Bach.

Stanley Kunitz on translation

The poet as translator lives with a paradox ... One voice enjoins him: "Respect the text!" The other simultaneously pleads with him: "Make it new!" He resembles the citizen in Kafka's aphorism who is fettered to two chains, one attached to earth, the other to heaven. If he heads for earth, his heavenly chain throttles him; if he heads for heaven, his earthly chain pulls him back. And yet, as Kafka says, "all the possibilities are his, and he feels it; more, he actually refuses to account for the deadlock by an error in the original fettering." From "A Note on the Translations," in Poems of Akhmatova.

De El monolingüismo del otro de Jacques Derrida/From The Monolingualism of the Other by JD

... me pregunto si se puede amar, gozar, orar, reventar de dolor o reventar a secas en otra lengua.

... I wonder whether one can love, enjoy, pray, die of pain, or die period, all in another language.