Hector Roman

on translating Osip Mandelstam

When asked to translate a poem for Professor Taije Silverman's class, "The Translation of Poetry, the Poetry of Translation," Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) wasn't my first choice of poets, both because I was unfamiliar with Russian and because everyone else in the class seemed overexcited about his poetry. This changed as soon as I learned who Mandelstam was, and I can't even begin to truly understand what he risked to write his poetry. Though he was writing poetry in Russia during a time when being part of literary group was inherently dangerous, Mandelstam kept reading his poetry to his peers and was exiled multiple times until his death in a camp for exiles.

His poem warns against the temptation of translation --the desire to claim someone else's work by translating it into your own tongue. In translating this poem, I wanted to capture my own personal justification for translating; my translation is a kind of response to Mandelstam's original poem. I believe that even if we, as translators, can't understand the intention or emotion behind a specific work, we can still make a beautiful translation by finding new intention and meaning in our own interpretations of the original. As long as we can convey those feelings--our own feelings--then the translation can be successful. My adaptation does, for the most part, follow the original, with slight changes to make it more conversational.

I titled my poem "Another Tongue," but there is no title for the original. Mandelstam only spoke his poems, and when he died his wife wrote them down from memory. They had no titles. However, most other translations refer to this poem as "To the Translator" for ease.