Transcriber: Trinh Hà Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
"The day in Hue bleeds,
Uncle Ha Noi returns,
A chance encounter,
They meet in Hàng Bè.
The quick little boy,
His pretty little satchel,
His quick little feet,
His little head tilting,
His little sailor hat slanted,
His mouth whistling
a little hummingbird,
Hopping along the yellow road...
"Delivering messages,
was such fun,
in Fort Mang Cá,
better than being home!"
Laughing eyes,
Cheeks so pink,
- "Until later, comrade!"
Slowly he fades into the distance...
I go my way,
You go yours.
As June arrives,
News comes to home
As it turned out to be,
Oh, Lượm!
On a fateful day,
Like any other day,
The little comrade,
Put the letter in his satchel,
Swishing past the battlefront,
Whoosh... whoosh... The bullets fly,
A letter reading "urgent",
Fearlessly he goes!
The country roads lonely,
Rice fields abundant,
His little sailor hat,
Just peeking above it all...
A flash of red!
Oh god! Oh Lượm!
The little comrade,
A stream of blood...
As he lies on the fields
Hand grasping a wheat stalk,
Smelling of sweet milk,
His soul ascends from the field.
Oh Lượm, are you still there?
The quick little boy,
His pretty little satchel,
His quick little feet,
His little head tilting,
His little sailor hat slanted,
His mouth whistling,
Like a little hummingbird,
Hopping along the yellow road..."
(Applause)
This was the first poem I translated over four years ago,
and to this day, it remains the only translated version of it available.
The theme of this TEDx is Globalization
and how we are moving into a more interconnected society than ever.
This is undoubtedly true and we're becoming more connected
through a myriad of ways, such as economics, politics, and music.
Yet, we aren't as thoroughly connected with our literature.
The University of Rochester has created a database of translated texts in 2008,
and since then, they have recorded 5,000 translated texts.
This sounds like a lot until I tell you
that 1 million texts were published in the US alone from 2011 to 2013.
Not to mention, the top two languages within translated texts
are English and French,
which goes to show you how truly limited the volume of literature
from less mainstream cultures is being translated.
Translation is underappreciated and underrated,
yet it is crucial to us as a society to understand each other.
I myself was quite reluctant to enter this world
when I translated my first poem over four years ago.
It was for an English class,
and the teacher, who had confidence in my success,
said that I could take this instead of the assessment she gave everyone else.
Naturally, as a 14-year-old, I chose what I thought to be the easy path,
but turns out I was wrong.
It was hard. It was technical. It was stressful.
Every time I came back to my teacher with a revision,
she'd point out something so technical and minute
yet still so important to the meaning of the text
that I was simply frustrated -
frustrated with something I didn't understand
and something I didn't see the point of.
But by some miracle, I finished it.
I thought it was pretty good.
But then again, I was quite a confident 14-year-old,
maybe a bit too confident.
(Laughter)
But it turns out, my teacher thought it was good too,
so she sent it to Lady Borton - an American poet and author
most famous for her involvement in Vietnam since the war.
At one point, there was even a talk about publication in a literary magazine,
which I thought was pretty cool.
It didn't pan out, but you know ...
But then I went back to my video games and music,
and I was done.
The 14-year-old version of a one-hit wonder, right?
(Laughter)
But then, as life would have it, you know, I wasn't done yet,
even if I did try to distance myself from any further poetic work
and bask in the glory of feedback from a famous poet.
So when grade nine came around
and I had to do a poetry assignment for this class,
it wasn't so hard this time, and it was engaging and interesting.
For those of you who are interested, I translated a version -
I'm sorry, I adapted a version of Romeo and Juliet into sonnet,
and you really don't want to know the details of that.
But when grade 10 came around, and I had to do my personal project,
which is sort of like a high school thesis except a thousand times easier,
I was drawn to poetry.
After two months, I decided that I would use my project
to represent Vietnamese poetry through the ages.
And here's the cover of it.
[Vietnam's Poetry Through The Ages]
Ultimately, I divided up Vietnamese poetry into five main movements
and chose the poems I felt were best representative of these movements
and translated them.
It's a sort of primer on Vietnamese poetry and, to that extent, its culture as well.
Now, I've been in International School since I was five,
and since then, I've spent the majority of my days speaking in English.
So for someone like me,
it's really easy to feel disconnected with your own culture.
And so for me, this project took on a life of its own
and became a personal journey into rediscovering, or discovering -
or having a better understanding of what my culture is.
Through my interactions with literature,
I was able to broaden my notion of what constitutes Vietnamese culture.
More than that, I was able to understand how my identity fits into all of this.
And for me, that's really where the value of translation lies.
Take a look at this poem:
"A red silken scarf,
I float aimlessly with the wind,
Whose possession will I become?"
And from what I classify as "The Folklore Age of Poetry,"
before written language was discovered,
and this form of poetry - the "Thân em" or "My body" form -
was incredibly popular, in which it is literally an expression
of the woman's frustration at the patriarchy that confines her.
But more than that, it's also about this complex resistance
and everyday negotiation of woman within the constraints that they faced.
Now, I remember when I first read this poem,
I was thinking what some of you may be thinking right now,
"Wow! It reads like a contemporary feminist poem.
It's so progressive."
But then I thought to myself, "Why? Why do I think this?
Why do I assume those who lived before me to be less progressive than I am?"
And so through this process, I was able to see the different ways
in which women lived with and within the patriarchy of the time
and how they were able to resist against this.
And the value in translating is for me to be able to see these complex nuances
and translate them for others to see as well
so that they don't just assume that Vietnamese culture is backwards,
or that they don't just assume that women lived within oppression as objects.
And for me, I'm able to turn these simple readings and assumptions
about Vietnamese life and Vietnamese culture
into something more complex and pluralized.
And that's what I mean when I say
that translation allows you to read any piece of text in the world,
but it also allows you to read what's all around it
because it offers you a glimpse into the window of the context.
Now, one of the main ways in which you appreciate a work of literature
is through understanding the author's choices and intentions.
As Gregory Rabassa once said,
"When you're translating, you're playing Shakespeare,
but you're Hamlet as well."
When translating, I was able to get a sense of my culture
and the values come along with it,
and I was able to share this with my friends, my teachers, my community.
Take "Lượm" for example.
It is one of my favorite poems because of how I feel it captures
an important aspect of Vietnamese culture and history.
It really is, I think,
about the unflinching hand of war and how none are immune to its touch.
It doesn't only depict the image everyone thinks of when they think of war
with bullets and soldiers all around,
but rather it depicts an image of Lượm -
only a small child caught in the crosshairs of war -
and this idea of a lost generation,
a generation of children who are brave and patriotic like Lượm
but who are unnecessarily so.
And I think once you understand that,
Vietnamese culture begins to make more sense to you
because, you know, our strong resilience, our strong national pride,
it all links back to our past and how we overcame
centuries of oppression and colonialism to become independent.
And for me, that's why translation illuminates the past
not only for those who translate it but for those who read it as well.
By reading works of translation,
you can get as much knowledge as I can from translating it,
and the only difference would be our interaction with the text.
And through this process, I was also introduced to a term
that many of you may be familiar with, which is "lost in translation."
But to me, that's the biggest misnomer of all
because it's true that there is no perfect translation,
and, you know, many people have different theories and approaches to translation,
and everyone is different.
Some may focus on the language and structure,
whereas others may choose to focus on the meaning and intention of the poem.
Neither are perfect and neither are wrong.
With one, you may lose the meaning and retain the structure.
And with the other, you might get the opposite effect.
Take a look at this folklore poem I translated, for example.
Pay attention to the bolded lines - or the highlighted lines.
"Working in the fields, I left a shirt behind,
If you have it, I ask for its return."
This is a folklore poem depicting the story of a man
who's trying to court a woman,
and it's also about this rural life.
Now, I want you to take a look at this other translated poem.
This is the same poem that's been translated,
but this is an alternate version.
And again, pay attention to these bolded lines.
For me, these two poems tell two different stories,
and let me show you by having them side by side.
For me, the first poem is about -
The first poem, it paints a guy as more direct and blunt character
simply saying what he wants, you know,
"If you have my shirt, may I have it back."
Whereas in the second poem, it paints him as more diplomatic and more charismatic.
And for me, it's what's really important to a translator.
And more than that, through this process,
I was able to learn about the rural life of Vietnam back then,
you know, the fields, the lotus, the dowries -
it's a reflection of the society back then,
but it's also a reflection of that patriarchy I was talking about.
Now, when I first translated this poem, I thought "tát nước đầu đình"
literally meant slapping water by the temple.
And for those of you who don't know,
that's as literal a translation as you can get, right?
But then I learned it's a term for irrigation,
but who wants to say irrigation by the temple?
So then I was faced with this choice:
do I keep its literal meaning or do I try to change it to something
that perhaps will keep the feel and soul of the poem but will lose the structure?
And again, this is the dilemma that translators often face.
And let me show you through another poem.
Do you recognize this?
It's an early rendition of "Thân em," but here it's different.
"My body is like a red silk cloth,
Dangling without direction in the market, who knows whose hands it'll end up in."
Here the pronouns are gone.
It adds a different dynamic to the poem
in how you look at the aspect of the woman's life,
and perhaps it is more overt, which is indicative of this type of poetry.
But in my opinion, it also sounds a lot more awkward.
Here, look at this poem and the original side by side.
I believe in the preferred version, it does a much better job of, you know,
of once again tackling this aspect of the woman's fate in Vietnam.
And here "Whose possession will I become?"
serves as the line condemning this view of woman as property or as an object,
and once again, it goes back to tackling this patriarchy.
So it's inevitable in translation that you will get different interpretations -
that's always going to be a problem with translation equivalence.
But one cannot say that's what's wrong with translation
because with the many different interpretations,
you're actually gaining perspectives,
and through that, that's actually what's gained in translation
and not what's lost.
Translation isn't about being the best writer, the best poet,
or even the best linguist.
Rather it's about finding meaning for yourself
but also finding meaning for others as well.
In this process, I was able to reconnect with my culture in a deeper way.
So if I can leave you with one thought, it is this:
Interact with translation,
whether it be you translate works of translation yourself or text and email,
whether it be you read and share works of translation,
there's this whole world of knowledge out there waiting for you,
and who knows what you might gain in translation.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)