Chapter 22 The art of transmutation
Case study: knowing when poetry has enough
Poetry makes the choice between translation and transmutation hard to hide. Bashō's haiku gives Phi a pond, a frog, a jump, and a sound, and the lexicon has a direct word for every one of them:
furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
old pond — / a frog leaps in / the sound of water
What is the poem doing?
The poem places an old pond, a frog's sudden movement, and the sound of water in sequence. A reader may find stillness and interruption there, but the translator does not need to erase the frog to make that reading possible.
The Phi concepts
- Old pond:
serao melothe. - Frog:
tuleno, the ordinary base word. - Jump into water:
muo phialu tupi, with the destination before the verb. - Sound of water:
phialu shonuwa, possessor before possessed.
Keep the source details
The close rendering uses those direct words:
serao melothe.
old pond.
tuleno muo phialu tupi.
frog INTO water jump.
phialu shonuwa.
water sound.
The first and last lines are verbless images, while the only verb lands in the middle line. Phi's verb-final order puts tupi after the frog and its destination. Nothing in the grammar claims that this is Bashō's original rhythm, but the three images remain intact.
A deliberate transmutation
The interpretive path is still available as a separate work:
serao melothe.
old pond.
limoe muo phialu kamo.
creature INTO water arrive.
phialu haoni.
water voice.
This version turns the frog into an unnamed creature, the jump into an arrival, and sound into voice. Those changes are not repairs for missing vocabulary. They make the water answer and let the creature recede into the event. A transmuter may want that poem, but should not call it a close translation of Bashō's details.
On form
Neither Phi version copies a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. Full hiatus gives serao melothe six syllables. A translator may choose a formal constraint and record what it costs; a transmuter may build a different rhythm. Tempo remains the reader's choice.
What the choice shows
The direct vocabulary makes the boundary unusually clear. One version keeps the frog, jump, and sound. The other gives them up for a new image. Transmutation is not improved by changing a source merely because change is permitted; sometimes the close rendering is the answer with less to apologise for.