Some issues in the translation of Welsh poetry.

There is no present in Wales,

And no future;

There is only the past,

Brittle with relics,

Wind-bitten towers and castles

With sham ghosts;

Mouldering quarries and mines;

And an impotent people,

Sick with inbreeding,

Worrying the carcase of an old song.1

The above astringent view of Wales and her people is part of a poem

published in 1952 by R. S. Thomas who died in 2000. He is regarded as one of the

most important of Welsh modern poets and was nominated for the Nobel Prize for

Literature in 1966, and though buried in a nondescript grave in Gwynedd was given

a memorial service in Westminster Abbey. Notwithstanding his poetic genius, such

fame is due, in no small part, to the fact that he wrote in English which meant that he

could communicate with and be appreciated by a very large number of people all

over the world. Thus the views, whether correct or not, that he expresses in the

above quotation are in the wider public domain where they wouldn’t be had he

written in Welsh. Though Thomas spoke and wrote prose in fluent Welsh he chose

English as his poetic language and thus eschewed the classical poetic structures of

his native language. It is conjectural whether he intended to describe these

structures as ‘the carcase of an old song’ but non Welsh readers would certainly not

1 R.S.Thomas, ‘Welsh Landscape’ Collected Poems 1945- 1990 (London: Phoenix Press, 2001), p. 37.

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have the first hand evidence to be able to disprove this and to argue against the

implication that the Welsh live in the past.

It is true that a poetic tradition that has spanned over one thousand five

hundred years is still reflected in today’s Welsh National Eisteddfod. A chair is still

presented to the author of the best piece of poetry incorporating the twenty-four strict

metres that Dafydd ap Edmwnd used when winning the first ‘national’ chair at the

Carmarthen Eisteddfod in 1450. In 2008, however, the National Eisteddfod chair

was not won by an awdl1 but by a collection of poems still displaying the use of strict

cynghanedd,2 though now with free verse alongside the old strict metres. The

subjects that the winning poets have sung about have also been contemporary ones

and last year’s winning composition, Hilma Lloyd Edwards’ Tir Newydd (New World)3,

is no exception. In Tir Newydd Hilma Lloyd Edwards displays her versatility by using

free verse side by side with the cywydd4 and englyn5 while at the same time

experimenting with cynghanedd forms. Contrary to R.S.Thomas’ charges she deals

with modern themes such as global warming and space travel.

The translation of Welsh poetry thus becomes particularly important in

providing some of the evidence on which informed decisions on controversial

statements can be made. Important as it may be, this cannot be the only reason for

the translation of Welsh poetry to English. Over the centuries there have been major

1 An awdl is a long poem written in one of the twenty-four strict metres of Welsh classical poetry.2 The most comprehensive delineation is John Morris-Jones’s Cerdd Dafod (1980). A good basic English explanation can be found in Eurys I. Rowlands’s Poems of the Cywyddwyr (1976). The gradual evolution of cynghanedd has been traced by Thomas Parry in ‘Twf y Gynghanedd’, The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (London, 1936, 143-60).3 Hilma Lloyd Edwards, ’Tir Newydd’, Tir Newydd a cherddi eraill (Caernarfon: Gwasg y Bwthyn, 2008) pp.11-19.4 Morris-Jones, (pp.327-330).5 Morris-Jones, (pp. 319-327).

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Welsh poets and many of their poems have been significant works of art and often

masterpieces. Tony Conran writes that ‘Welsh cannot compete with French,

Spanish, Russian, German, Italian or English in the quality or importance of its

literature’ but then asks whether ‘after those seven, is there another literature in

modern Europe with anything like the wealth of Welsh?’1 Ensuring acquaintance

with such riches is important and it begs the question whether ‘every worthy book in

the world should be available to all people in every language’.2 Defining ‘worthiness’

within a culture is problematic as the debate about the nature of ‘high’ culture has

proved. For T. S. Eliot and F. R. Leavis, for example, ‘high culture’ is the preserve of

very few in society but Charles Kraszewski goes so far as to say that the worthy

class of literary works is not only those ‘of the highest metaphysical value’ or those of

‘practical value’ but ‘both “deep” and trivial works of literature’.3

Tir Newydd certainly does not qualify as one of Kraszewski’s ‘trivial’ works

of literature. It consists of six poems, each linked to a different place: Easter Island;

Tuvalu in the South Pacific; Spitsbergen; Rheged4; and the Moon. Disasters have

happened or will happen in each of these places and, in the anguish of life and the

end of their ‘world’, we are told that cultures and lands have disappeared and that

we, ourselves, will eventually have to leave Earth in order to find a ‘New Land’.

Different layers of ‘new land’ are explored from the standpoints of place, time and

experience and the poems are also a meditation on why our society cannot

comprehend primitive objects and experiences. The ‘cruel, yet charitable’ carved

1 Welsh Verse, trans. by Tony Conran, 3rd edition (Bridgend: Seren Books, 1992), p. 102).2 Kraszewski, Charles S. Four Translation Strategies Determined by the Particular Needs of the Receptor,

(Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997, p. 21).3 Kraszewski, (p. 23)4 One of the kingdoms of Britain in the Middle Ages which probably included what is now Cumbria in North West England and possibly extended into Lancashire and Scotland.

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effigies of Easter Island are a secret to us. In Tuvalu, the destructive power of nature

is personified as a primitive god: the ‘Tide-King tramped/ the land in heat of battle’.

‘Rheged’ captures the dualism of a patriotic Welshman dreaming romantically about

that lost kingdom, while at the same time squirming from its savage and bloody

reality. The two final poems bring us back to the present and onward to the future,

accentuating our feebleness. The whole is tied together by the parallel

consciousness of the old and new, and a mixture of nostalgia for what has been and

the hope for what is to come, which is a part of all change.

That Tir Newydd is a worthy and valuable work for translation is therefore

not in doubt which begs the question of why there is a dearth of translations of such

poems. Perhaps it has something to do with the very nature of translation itself.

George Steiner writes that when using a word ‘we wake into resonance [. . .] its

entire previous history. A text is embedded in specific historical time’.1 Thus it is

indispensable for a translator to have an informed awareness of the history of the

source language, a mastery of the temporal and local setting of the text, and a

familiarity with the author’s work. I can’t pretend to know any of Edwards’ other work

but I certainly have an in-depth knowledge of the source language, come from the

same area in Gwynedd as the author, and differ by less than a generation in age.

Re-enacting the creation of a poet, the process of ‘original repetition’2 as Steiner

terms it, is essentially impossible even when the source language is the target

language. No speech of Hamlet, for example, can ever be spoken in the same way,

no more than a symphony of Mozart can ever be played in the same way though

1 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of language & translation Third Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 24.

2 Steiner, (p. 27).

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using identical instruments and score. When the source language is different to the

target language matters get even more difficult. There are hundreds of languages

which are mutually incomprehensible but some do have common roots and share

words with common etymological meanings which would appear to ameliorate the

translator’s problems. Night (English), nuit (French) and Nacht (German), for

example, appear to be good mutual translations but this is rarely if ever the case.

Cognates such as these do not have acoustical equivalence and might also have

different contextual nuances in their respective languages.

It must also be considered whether any re-enactment or translation can

ever replicate the author’s intention. Has any performance of a Beethoven

symphony sounded like the one in Beethoven’s imagination? Even more

fundamental, perhaps, is the question whether the score of a Beethoven symphony

is a true ‘re-enactment’ of his intentions? Whether writers’ intentions can be

interpreted from their texts is debatable. Roland Barthes has gone as far as to even

reject the view that ‘the author is the origin of a text, the source of its meaning and

the only authority for interpretation’.1 ‘A text’s unity,’ he writes, ‘lies not in its origin

but in its destination [the reader].’2 Thus Barthes suggests that writing defies

adherence to a single interpretation or perspective, and Julia Kristeva writes that

‘every text builds itself as a mosaic of quotations, every text is an absorption and

transformation of another text’.3 Richard Jackson develops a similar argument when

he writes that ‘whenever we read a poem in our own language we bring our own

1 Raman Selden and Peter Widdowson, Contemporary Literary Theory, Third Edition,(Kentucky: Kentucky University Press, 1993), pp. 131-32.

2 Barthes, R. (1977) ‘Death of the Author’ in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (London: W.W.Norton & Company, 2001), pp. 1466-70.3 The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 37.

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experiences, contexts, and notions to the text, and they interact to form a unique

experience called the poem.’ He argues that ‘we translate even as we read within

our own language.’1 Thus whenever a poem is read or spoken there are complex

interactions which leave the poem as a new work; it is different to all previous

readings of the poem, and the implication for a translator is that whatever strategy he

adopts he is already dealing with a ‘new’ poem. Thus ‘New Land’2 is a ‘new’ poem; it

is not the poem that Hilma Lloyd Edwards had in mind or even wrote. Kraszewski,

rather melodramatically, cautions the translator to ‘remember that literary translation

is the forgery of an earlier lie’.3

The immediate conclusion is that there cannot be a perfect translation but,

nevertheless, there is a poem in Welsh written by Hilma Lloyd Edwards and there

are people speaking another language who might want to read it. Accepting that I

could never produce a perfect ‘mirror image’ of Tir Newydd, all I could attempt to do

was bring over as much of it as possible into English. I searched for an approach

that would help me achieve this and decided on Charles S. Kraszewski’s

‘Informational Translation Strategy’4. This approach demands a high level of

‘faithfulness’ to both vocabulary and poetics while reproducing the ‘message’,

authorial intent, of the original poem. It is very practical in its application and its first

aim is to try and preserve the literary form and metre of the original. Secondly, the

translator needs to try and preserve the acoustical structure of the poem. Thirdly, all

1 Richard Jackson, ‘From Translation to Imitation’, (2003) <www.utc.edu/Academic/Emglish/pm/ontransl.htm.> [accessed 10/11/08].

2 See Appendix.

3 Kraszewski, (p. 21).4 Kraszewski, (pp. 31-69).

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cognates that appear in the original need to be kept, and, lastly, the appearance of

the poem need to be preserved.

More than half of Tir Newydd is written in free verse which does simplify

the first task of preserving the literary form and metre because I do not need to worry

about rhyme. The other poems are significantly different because they consist of the

englyn and cywydd forms.1 Tony Conran writes that ‘the hunt for a method to

translate the cywydd has been in progress for well over a century, and everyone has

his own idea of how it should be done’.2 The first stanza of a cywydd written by

Dafydd ap Gwilym3 can be used to illustrate this point:

Plygu rhag llid yr ydwyf,

Pla ar holl ferched y plwyf!

Am na chefais, drais drawsoed,

Onaddun’ yr un erioed

Na morwyn fwyn ofynaig,

Na merch, na grwach, na gwraig. 4

Rachel Bromwich believes that ‘straight prose has been the most successful medium

employed by translators of Celtic poetry, both Welsh and Irish’, and her translation

reflects this belief.5 The first stanza of her translation of the above cywydd, which

she entitled ‘The Girls of Llanbadarn’ is as follows:

I am distraught with passion:

a plague on all the parish girls!

because I never—violation of trysts—

was able to win even one of them,

1 See above, page 2.2 Welsh Verse, (p. 336).3 Dafydd ap Gwilym (c. 1315/1320 – c. 1350/1370) is generally regarded as the greatest Welsh poet of all time

and amongst the great poets of Europe.4 Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym, ed. by Thomas Parry (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1952).5 Selected Poems of Dafydd Ap Gwilym, trans. by Rachel Bromwich, new edition

(Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1982), p. xxvii.

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no maiden—a gentle request—

nor little maid, nor hag nor wife.1

By adopting this method she not only preserves the poetic syntax but the meaning of

the original is also well expressed if at the expense of losing the rhyme and rhythm

of the cywydd which eventually tends towards monotony.

Rolfe Humphries also entitles the poem ‘The Girls of Llanbadarn’, but he

has adopted the use of trochaic tetrameters and often drops the weak ending of the

fourth trochee to give a seven syllable count and a strong resolution to the line:

I am one of passion’s asses,

Plague on all these parish lasses!

Though I long for them like mad,

Not one female have I had,

Not a one in all my life,

Virgin, damsel, hag or wife. 2

He also partly reproduces the rhyme scheme but the approach, as seen above,

gives a rather mechanical translation coming close to doggerel.

Conran, for the same poem, adopted a set of three-stress rhyming

couplets. His translation is entitled ‘The Ladies of Llanbadarn’:

Plague take the women here –

I’m bent down with desire,

Yet not a single one

I’ve trysted with, or won,

Little girl, wife or crone,

Not one sweet wench my own!3

1 Selected Poems of Dafydd Ap Gwilym, (p. 137).2 Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English, ed. Gwyn Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 37.3 Welsh Verse, (p. 173).

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He loses some of the syntactical structure of the original but does to a large degree

get the meaning across. His rhymes are far more sophisticated than Humphries’ but

he too fails to achieve the ‘light-rhyming’ pattern of the cywydd. Conran felt that the

method ‘twisted translations out of shape’ and decided to use a strict Irish metre

called Deibhidhe1 as his template for some of his translations. Even then he admits

to having a problem with rhymes, taking ‘a week to translate a single poem’, and still

finding it ‘a formidable challenge’.2 A translation that he made of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s

‘The Seagull’ replicates the syllabic and stress patterns, though he fails to achieve

the light-rhyme in the second couplet:

Yr wylan deg ar lanw dioer A fine gull on the tideflow,

Unlliw ag eiry neu wenlloer, All one white with moon or snow,

Dilwch yw dy degwch di, Your beauty’s immaculate,

Darn fel haul, dyrnfol heli. Shard like the sun, brine’s gauntlet.

Rachel Bromwich’s translates the beginning of the same poem as

Fair Seagull on the tide, in truth

your colour like the snow or the white moon;

unpolluted is your beauty,

a fragment of the sun, gauntlet of the salt sea.3

and seems to me to get a far better feel for Dafydd ap Gwilym’s verse. Bromwich

also makes the valid point that ‘Irish metrics are no less intricate than those of

1 An explanation and an example can be found in Lewis Turco The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics Third Edition (London: University Press of New England, 2000, p. 169).

2 Welsh Verse, (p. 338).3 Selected Poems of Dafydd Ap Gwilym, (p. 75).

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Welsh’4 which begs the question why Conran reverted to the Deibhidhe rather than

persevering with the cywydd.

In view of such conflicting approaches I decided to compromise and adopt

a strategy that would maintain the syllabic count and rhythm, particularly the

alternatively stressed line endings. In view of the difficulties expressed by both

Conran and Bromwich I decided to ignore rhyme. Getting the meaning-content

within a correct syllabic count proved more difficult than expected and occasionally

the syllabic count would have to be increased or decreased. My approach is

exemplified by a stanza from ‘Tuvalu’ (stressed syllables in bold).

Tonnau llaeth hyd draeth ar dro Milky waves of a tide on turnAdwaenant ei ddod yno, knew well that he was present,

Gam wrth gam, i dorri’i gŵys foot by foot, to cut his trenchAr redeg drwy baradwys; encroaching into heaven;

Clywn ei sŵn o draw’n nesáu, from afar we hear his roar,Rhu oer bwytäwr erwau. the eater up of acres.

The first five stanzas of ‘Spitsbergen’ are different types of englyn and,

like Conran, I initially adopted free verse for the translation and preserved the

syllabic pattern. I also attempted to preserve the stress patterns of the originals as I

felt that despite not having cynghanedd or rhyme the translations would sound a bit

more like an englyn:

Draw ar orwel yr heli ar y tir Far on the sea’s horizon there’s a landlle ceir tawch rhwng rhewli’, with mists amongst glaciers ,

a dŵr yn adrodd stori: and water tells a story:

caer wen a’i hawyr denau yn wynfyd white fort with her pure air, a heaven

dan enfys o liwiau, under rainbow colours,

4 Selected Poems of Dafydd Ap Gwilym, (p.xxvii).

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dannedd brith ei deunydd brau fragile grey-white pinnacles

yn alar ac yn olau. despairing, yet resplendent.

In the ninth stanza Edwards uses a hir-a-thoddaid1.

O’i guddfan anwel, un gŵr yn hela

ar allt emrallt gan bwyntio’i gamera

ar emwaith o banorama, a gwêny wawr oren yn caboli’r eira.

and again I adopted the strategy of reproducing the stress pattern and the syllabic

count wherever possible:

From his secret hide a hunter stalksover an emerald hill aiming his camera

on a gem like panorama, the smile

of an orange dawn burnishing the snow.

The internal rhyme in the third line became automatic because the words for

‘camera’ and ‘panorama’ have the same meaning in English and Welsh.

To achieve the second aim of Kraszewski’s translation strategy the

acoustical structure of Tir Newydd needs to be preserved. Simwnt Fychan2 said that

’A poem is only formed to provide sweetness for the ear, and from the ear to the

heart’.3 The ‘sweetness for the ear’ in Welsh classical poetry is largely achieved

through cynghanedd4 and every line in Tir Newydd has an example of it. To achieve

this aim of Kraszewski, each line of the translation of Tir Newydd would have to have

English cynghanedd. Unfortunately, this proves to be exceedingly difficult.

1 Morris-Jones, pp. 342-343.2 Welsh poet and genealogist, (c. 1530 - 1606).3 The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry: 20th century Welsh-language poetry in translation,

ed. by Menna Elfyn and John Rowlands (Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2003), p.16.4 For a good basic introduction to cynghanedd see Hopwood (2004).

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According to Rolfe Humphries, Dylan Thomas believed that the traditional Welsh

metres were too difficult to be adapted successfully into the English language.5

Rachel Bromwich doesn’t even attempt to reproduce it. John Rowlands in his

introduction to The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry (see footnote 2, page

11) suggests that though poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins have attempted to

emulate it, ‘it does not exert the same power’ and that this is because of ‘the sharp

articulation of consonants in Welsh, which is by its nature a musical language.’ Tony

Conran ‘generally avoided it in its full form’6 and I have done the same though

examples do appear from time to time. I found that using alliteration in conjunction

with stress patterns did to a certain extent replicate the effect of cynghanedd. For

example:

Cruel, cold their cast (Easter Island, l. 6),

Tonight, the King Tide tramps (‘Tuvalu’, l. 5),

Where dozens once did rendezvous (‘Spitsbergen’, l. 12),

Providing hope for aspirations (‘Rheged’, l. 26),

Totters and scatters (‘Dubai’s Artificial Islands’ l. 25),

The ball became dull (The Moon’, l. 27),

and occasionally, by accident almost, the real thing appeared:

sprEAD over mEADows (Cynghanedd lusg: ‘Rheged’, l. 14)

slopes turning slippery (Cynghanedd draws: ‘Rheged’, l. 38)

Parading in paradise (Cynghanedd groes: ‘Dubai’s Artificial Islands’, l. 27).

Preserving the cognates, the third aim of Kraszewski’s strategy is far

easier. Cognates are linguistic units derived from the same source and I have

preserved such words as far as I could without doing injustice to the meaning, metre

or acoustical structures. An illustration of the preservation of cognates can be seen

5 Rolfe Humphries, Green Armor On Green Ground (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956), p. xiv.6 Welsh Verse, (p.339).

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in the last example, above, where ‘parading in paradise’ is the translation of ‘yn

rhodio ym mharadwys’ which includes the word ‘mharadwys’ ( a mutation of

‘paradwys’) which is cognate to ‘paradise’.

Welsh has never been a stagnant language and Latin and French words

from the Roman and Norman conquests were adopted and adapted into the

vocabulary. Dafydd ap Gwilym, for example, described his aged but still beloved

Morfudd as ‘henllath mangnel Wyddelig’ which Bromwich translates as ‘the bent stick

of an Irish mangonel’.1 A ‘mangonel’ was a Norman war engine for throwing stones.

Similarly, English words, themselves of Latin, French, Saxon and other origins, have

been and are being integrated into the language, and ‘Tir Newydd’ contains many

examples of such cognates. In Ynys y Pasg alone there are mesur/measure,

eonau/eons, gêm/game, albwm tri-dimensiwn/three-dimensional album,

bedlam/bedlam, drymiau/drums, murmur/murmur, dagr/dagger, gwin/wine,

ysbryd/spirit, and fflat/flat. Interestingly, ‘Rheged’, however, only contains one

example, fforestydd/forests which is consistent with the poem’s place and time.

Jakobson points out that there is often no full equivalence between source

language and target language texts and thus getting any linguistic equivalence is a

great boon for the translator.2 Unfortunately, even apparent synonymy does not

always yield equivalence, as the word gôr (a mutation of côr) in line thirty two (yn gôr

ar hanner gêm) demonstrates. ‘Côr’ is cognate to ‘choir’ but the translation of a

‘choir in mid game’ makes no sense and is translated as ‘a team at half-tlme’. This is

1 Selected Poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym (p.50, l.45).2 On Translation, ed. by R.A. Brower (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 239-9.

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an example of what Kraszewski terms a ‘false cognate’.3 Similarly, ‘electricity in the

organs/ organau’ doesn’t offer the right image for the effect of frenzied drumming on

the body. I have translated the line as ‘bodies in a delirium’.

If cognates give the translator some difficulties then ordinary words are far

more problematic. The word henfro (Rheged, l.10), for example, is a compound of

hen and bro, and their dictionary equivalents will not function properly in the

translated line. Hen can be translated as ‘old’, ‘ancient’, ‘aged’, or ‘antique’ and ‘bro’

as ‘land’, ‘country’, ‘realm’, ‘demesne’, ‘region’ or ‘nation’ but no combination will give

an adequate interpretation. The nostalgia, cultural ties and family ties which are

implicit in ‘henfro’ made me choose ‘Motherland’ but even this lacks the nuances of

‘home’ which henfro possesses. Earlier in Easter Island (l. 23) Hilma Lloyd Edwards

uses the word bro with a different nuance. She is here talking about the Easter

Island statues and asking whether some magician, full of mischief, might have grown

them like some primaeval trees from the soil of their bro. There is not the same

intimacy to bro in this context and I have translated that part of the stanza as:

Was it he that grew them

Like primaeval trees

From their nation’s soil?

Another example is catrawd frawdol (‘Easter Island’, l.24). This seems fairly

straightforward since catrawd is unequivocally ‘regiment’ and ‘frawdol’ is ‘brotherly’ or

‘fraternal’. But neither ‘brotherly regiment’ nor ‘fraternal regiment’ express the local

identity and mutual responsibility which should be present. Thinking of the

‘Accrington Pals’ and ‘Barnsley Pals’, regiments which were a response to

3 Kraszewski (1997, p. 47).

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Kitchener's call for a volunteer army at the beginning of the First World War, gave me

‘a regiment of pals’ which includes all the nuances that I required.

Some words are used several times in the poems but used in different

ways. ‘Wen’ (‘Ynys Y Pasg’, l.16), a mutation of ‘gwyn’ and indicating a female

subject, is usually used for the colour ‘white’ but can also mean ‘pale’, ‘holy’,

‘blessed’ or ‘chaste’. The idiom o oes i oes wen can’t be translated as ‘from age to

white/pale/holy/chaste age’ though ‘from age to blessed age’ is acceptable. Thinking

about ‘chaste’ in the context of ‘pure’ or’ new’ has made me understand Hilma Lloyd

Edwards to say quite simply that the Easter Island statues watch the march of the

sun ‘in each successive age’. Gwyn also appears as part of the compound word

brochwyn in ‘Tuvalu’ (l. 30) and means ‘white’ (white foamed flood) in this context.

Again, it has the same meaning in ‘Spitsbergen’ where we find caer wen (white

fortress) and arth wen (white bear) but later on in the same poem we find o ynys i

ynys wen. This line translates as ‘from island to white island’ but as in o oes i oes

wen, discussed earlier, it can be translated as ‘from island to successive island’ or

‘from island to new island’ reflecting the bear’s journey. But in the context of the

poem, ‘Spitsbergen’, ‘floe’ (an island of ice) offers a better translation for ynys and

‘virgin’ a better choice for wen to describe the ice floes that are breaking up, never

been touched before, and devoid of prey.

The right-aligned italicised verse at the end of ‘Easter Island’ has a

different register and, with a postmodernist slant, seems to step back from the

narrative and suggest the reader consider the relevant issues critically. It is an

enigmatic verse and one that I struggled with. A literal translation of

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. . . hwyrach

mai i ni y mae yn newydd,

y dwthwn hwn, y daith unig

tua’r dibyn, at derfyn dydd

yn niwl ein hoes annelwig . . .

is

. . . perhaps

that to us it is new,

this day, the lonely journey

towards the precipice, at the end of day

in the mist of our shapeless/vague/unformed age . . .

The third line includes dwthwn, a rather archaic word meaning ‘day’ which in today’s

Welsh has been superseded by dydd. A cynic might point out that y dwthwn hwn, y

daith unig is a valid cynghanedd where y dydd hwn, y daith unig’ is not, and that was

the reason why Hilma Lloyd Edwards chose dwthwn. But to me the verse has a

prayer like quality which suggests that dwthwn was a deliberate and appropriate

word choice. I couldn’t find a suitable English synonym for ‘day’ but realised that I

didn’t need to since ‘this day’ (y dwthwn hwn) had Biblical resonances such as “Give

us this day .....” I chose ‘shapeless’ for annelwig to mirror the idea of an ‘age’ in

‘mist’ and the stanza then translated as

. . . perhaps

that to us it is new,

this day, the lonely journey

towards the precipice, at the end of day

in the mist of our shapeless age . . .

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Unfortunately, the syllabic count was not correct and most importantly the rhythm of

the fourth line was faulty. I was also finding the last three lines difficult to interpret

but was mindful of Longfellow’s caution that ‘The business of a translator is to report

what the author says, not to explain what he means’.1 Bearing all this in mind I now

retranslated the stanza as

. . . perhaps

that to us it is new,

this day, the lonely journey

to the edge, at the end of day

in the mist of our shapeless age . . .

The shape of the verse, the syllabic count and the rhythm are much improved and

somehow my musings over the process of translation has clarified and even more

aware of the richness of Hilma Lloyd Edwards’ text.

There were also word problems to be resolved in ‘Rheged’. In the third

line of the first stanza was a word (lannau) that could have distinct meanings, any of

which could be appropriate. Lannau could be a mutation of Glannau (shores) or

Llannau (churches or villages). Thus the line could be translated as ‘Your shores

went into their hands’, ‘Your churches went into their hands’, or ‘Your villages went

into their hands’. I compromised with ‘your kingdom fell into their hands’ which I

believe encompasses both meanings.

The second stanza of ‘Rheged’ freely translates as:

Insignificant they cast you out as a nobody,

into oblivion without a real memorial,

1 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, quoted in Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies, revised edition (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 70.

~ 17 ~

to tread like some cliché/stereotype

on the hunting ground of immortality. . .

Adjectives usually come after the noun in Welsh, which explains the 'insignificant

they' of the first line. 'Subservients' seemed to be a reasonable translation. I

deliberated for quite a time over the word ystrydeb (cliché/stereotype) at the end of

the third line. I decide that ’To stride like some stereotype’ better reflected the

stanza's register and to clinch matters it came close to an example of cynghanedd

draws. So the translation became:

Subservients cast you out as a nobody

into oblivion without a shrine,

to stride like some stereotype

eternity’s hunting-grounds . . .

In the third stanza annelwig is used again:

Yr Hydref, minnau’n crwydro heolydd Autumn, I wandering the roads/streets

annelwig dy henfro shapeless/unformed/vague of your motherland.

I preferred to think of vaguely (annelwig) outlined lanes criss-crossing Rheged rather

than roads and streets and imagined the narrator meandering along them lost in his

or her thoughts about the past. These two lines are translated as

Autumn, and I meandering obscure

lanes of your motherland,

In the ninth stanza there are two kennings, boregad and briwgig. The

former is made up from the root words bore (‘morning’) and cad (‘battle’) and the

latter from briw (‘bruise’) and cig (‘flesh’). The first line of that stanza could thus be

translated as:

~ 18 ~

But there was a morning battle, there was bruised flesh

which does not reflect the terseness and alliteration of the Welsh:

Ond bu boregad, bu briwgig,

I was minded to construct English kennings to maintain the line’s mediaeval

character, something like:

But then mornfray and fleshbruise

but the line seemed artificial and contrived, which it is not in the Welsh text. I

decided to translate the line as:

But then battle and butchery.

Within Tir Newydd there are references to Welsh characters, place names

and literature. These are the ‘often untranslatable’, ‘native factors’1 that don’t exist in

the target language. Kraszewski suggests that referring the reader to a glossary is

‘the only honest way to transfer the goods of a completely different source culture

into the culture of the receptor language.’ He goes on to point out that this is not

‘solely a matter of accuracy and straightforwardness’ but that ‘the cultural

imagination of the reader is broadened in a reciprocal relation to the amount of

contact he makes with that “completely different” culture.’2 Since this was one of my

purposes for the translation I adopted a strategy of referring the reader of ‘New Land’

to a ‘Notes’ section.

1 Kraszewski (p. 48-9).2 Kraszewski (p. 50).

~ 19 ~

Preserving the appearance of the original text is the last aim of

Kraszewski’s translation strategy3 and to a large degree attempting to maintain the

syllabic counts of corresponding source language and target language lines has

achieved this, as a side by side printing demonstrates. The similar physical

appearance, however, does pose the question of whether the target language reader

can distinguish between the free verse stanzas and those written in traditional Welsh

measures, particularly since the latter’s characteristic rhyme schemes are largely not

reproduced. Hilma Lloyd Edwards uses the traditional measures in ‘Tuvalu’,

‘Spitsbergen’ and ‘Rheged’ and if my translation strategy of attempting to maintain

rhythm and syllabic counts has been successful then the reader should be able to

discern a significant difference between those poems and ‘Ynys Y Pasg’, ‘Ynysoedd

Gwneud Dubai’ and ‘Y Lleuad’. The acid test appears in ‘Spitsbergen’ where Hilma

Lloyd Edwards has chosen to write three of its eleven stanzas in free verse. The first

instance is in the eighth verse where the polar bear’s environment is breaking up and

the bear herself is close to death. Then there is an interlude with a positive

traditional view of Spitsbergen’s beauty in the hir a thoddaid form before we are

confronted with two stanzas in free verse hinting at global warming: ‘the unseen

teeth/ that chews right through the flesh’. I believe that this ‘melting’ of the traditional

meters is no accident and am concerned about whether the target language reader

will be able to detect it in my translation.

Roman Jakobson writes that ‘both the practice and the theory of

translation abound with intricacies, and from time to time attempts are made to sever

the Gordian knot by proclaiming the dogma of untranslatability.2 It would also be

3 Kraszewski (p.44).2 On Translation, (p.234).

~ 20 ~

easy for me to conclude that translating Welsh classical poetry is an impossible task

and resort to suggesting that the only way to appreciate it is through learning the

language. The reality is that, using Kraszewski’s Information Translation Strategy,

‘New Land’1 now exists side by side with ‘Tir Newydd’. I accepted from the

beginning that equivalence or sameness cannot exist between the two texts and I

chose Kraszewski’s strategy with the view of minimising the losses in the translation

process. Because the strategy establishes a set of methodological criteria for the

translator to follow, there is an inherent danger of focussing on ‘some elements at

the expense of others and from this failure to consider the poem as an organic

structure comes a translation that is demonstrably unbalanced.’2 ‘New Land’ is

‘demonstrably’ unbalanced because of the loss of cynghanedd but this cannot be

blamed on Kraszewski’s approach. For all translators of Welsh classical poetry,

cynghanedd is closely tied in with syllabics, stress patterns and rhyme, and thus

preserving ‘form’, ‘metre’ and ‘acoustical structure’ is one process and not the three

distinct ones of Kraszewski. In addition, as mentioned above, other translators have

found it very difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce cynghanedd in English. The

‘preservation of cognates’ was much more straightforward because of the many

‘borrowed words’ from English that are in the in the Welsh language. The number of

such cognates, however, is minimal compared with the other words in the set of

poems and Kraszewski’s strategy, other than emphasising getting ‘a perfect

reproduction of the meaning-content of the original poem’,3 is not particularly

illuminating on how to deal with these. The final aim of ‘preserving the appearance

1 See Appendix I.2 Bassnett, (p.82).3 Kraszewski, (p. 44).

~ 21 ~

of the original poem’ proved reasonably straightforward, though, as discussed above,

there is an issue concerning the differentiation of free-verse and classical measures.

André Lefevre catalogues seven different methods employed by English

translators of Catullus’ Poem 641 and concludes that none is successful because

each method has a particular emphasis, and that to understand a literary text is to

realise that it is made up of a complex set of interrelated systems. Kraszewski’s

approach reflects an attempt at a synthesis of such emphases in a search for a more

holistic strategy, but, as indicated above, it does have its limitations. Nonetheless, it

did provide the infrastructure for the composition of ‘New Land’ and I do believe that

enough remains of ‘Tir Newydd’ for the reader to appreciate and enjoy the work of a

modern, female Welsh poet.

Susie Wild recently wrote in Mslexia2 about the burgeoning talent of Welsh

women writers writing in English. In the subtitle of her article she indicates that they

are ‘no longer in the shadow of the bardic greats’ but what she fails to point out is

that many of the present ‘bardic greats’ are women. I would suggest that it is these

‘dragonesses’ that are changing the social standing of female writers in Wales, and

that by reading translations of their work people will conclude that

There is a present in Wales,

And a future;

There is the past,

Brittle with relics,

Wind-bitten towers and castles

With sham ghosts;

Mouldering quarries and mines;

1 André Lefevere, Translating Poetry, Seven Strategies and a Blueprint (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1975).2 Susie Wild, ‘Dragoness’ Lair’, Mslexia, 40 (2009), 8-11.

~ 22 ~

But a potent people,

Reaching for tomorrow,

Using the carcase of an old song.

Finally, not all the motivation for translating Tir Newydd has been extrinsic;

I have found the process both enjoyable and stimulating. To paraphrase Peter

Newmark,1 I have introduced a piece of Welsh poetry to an audience that has had

no previous access to it and I am proud of being part of the process. Through doing

this I have developed an empathy with an author that I had previously not known and

in so doing I believe that I am enhancing my own poetic capabilities. Like solving a

difficult clue in a Guardian or Times crossword, identifying that elusive word that will

provide a perfect translation is deeply satisfying. The process is also never-ending

as each new reading of Tir Newydd and ‘New Land’ produces a new draft of the

latter and pinpoints ways for me to improve as a translator.

* * * * * * * * * * *

1 Peter Newmark, A Textook of Translation (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall, 1988).

~ 23 ~

References

Bassnett, Susan, Translation Studies, revised edition (London: Routledge, 1991)

Bromwich, Rachel, trans., Selected Poems of Dafydd Ap Gwilym, new edition

(Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1982)

Brower, R. A., ed. by, On Translation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1959)

Conran, Tony, trans. Welsh Verse, 3rd edition (Bridgend: Seren Books, 1992)

Elfyn, Menna and Rowlands, John, eds., The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry:

20th century Welsh-language poetry in translation,

(Tarset, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2003)

Hopwood, Mererid, Singing in Chains: Listening to Welsh Verse (Llandysul: Gomer Press,

2004.

Humphries, Rolfe, Green Armor On Green Ground (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956)

Jackson, Richard (2003) ‘From Translation to Imitation’

www.utc.edu/Academic/English/pm/ontransl.htm, accessed 10/11/08

Jones, Gwyn, ed., Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)

~ 24 ~

Kraszewski, Charles S. Four Translation Strategies Determined by the Particular Needs of

the Receptor, (Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997)

Lefevere, André, Translating Poetry, Seven Strategies and a Blueprint

(Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1975)

Leitch, Vincent B., gen. ed., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

(London: W.W.Norton & Company, 2001)

Lloyd Edwards, Hilma, Tir Newydd a cherddi eraill (Caernarfon: Gwasg y Bwthyn, 2008)

Mslexia, 40 (2009)

Moi,Toril, ed. The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990)

Morris-Jones, John, Cerdd Dafod (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1980)

Newmark, Peter, A Textook of Translation (Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall, 1988)

Parry, Thomas, ‘Twf y Gynghanedd’, The Transactions of the Honourable Society of

Cymmrodorion (London, 1936)

Parry, Thomas, ed., Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym (Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1952)

Rowlands, Eurys I., Poems of the Cywyddwyr (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies: 1976)

Selden, Raman and Widdowson, Peter, Contemporary Literary Theory, Third Edition,

~ 25 ~

(Kentucky: Kentucky University Press, 1993)

Steiner, George, After Babel: Aspects of language & translation Third Edition

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Thomas, R. S., Collected Poems 1945- 1990 (London: Phoenix Press, 2001)

* * * * * * * * * * *

~ 26 ~

Acknowledgements

'Diolch yn fawr' to Hilma Lloyd Edwards for allowing me to translate Tir Newydd.

Many thanks to Dr Ian Fairley, Leeds University School of English, for his enthusiastic support and advice.

~ 27 ~

Appendix

NEW LAND

i

EASTER ISLAND

Their lineage, no one knows —the men of stonecarved in the mists of yearsgone by; the mensmile-less, frown-less,cruel, cold their cast, eternity in their features,drawn.

But we do know this —they stand in lines marking the slowness of centuriesmeandering the enchanting vistas of their beauteous isle;a grounded legion standingto watch the march of sunsin each successive age.

Is this a secret army,framed by the magicof some Gwydioni full of mischiefeons back?Was it him that grew themlike primaeval treesfrom their nation’s soil?

Raised as a regiment of pals,heroes to hazardhidden hordesof enemies? Or were they carvedin primal times as sets of playing pieces,dispersed over celestial boards,to wait on their green squares,as a team on half-timein a game long forgottenby oppressed generations?

~ 28 ~

It’s said they’re the forefathers —replicas of the tribe’s past,placed on their lofty plinths;permanent memorials,single purposed — a three-dimensional albumfor the benefit of days to come.

There’s Grandad, and his father,unrivalled giants from the fiery otherworld,watching their lineagein work and in play,otherwordly beings on their acre of land;cruel, yet charitable,benign, barbaric, each in their turn ...

I see a fiery bedlam,shadowy drums clamour,jolting bodies in a delirium,a multitude in a mad murmur.

Seeing a sanguine sword, seeing tears of blood.

A crowd, naked,lustful, deafening,strident on ritual wine,awhirl round the altars,wailing for slaughterin the night of the sharp knives.

Is he a hero, naked in gold,the wretch in the middle,struggling in the shackles of death;his spirit to be released, a sacrifice to the faces flat and silent?

Their lineage, no one knows —the men of stonecarved in the mistsof time gone by; the mensmile-less, frown-less,cruel, cold their cast,and the old nightmaresveiled in their elongated faces . . .

~ 29 ~

perhapsthat to us it is new,

this day, the lonely journeyto the edge, at the end of day

in the mist of our shapeless age . . .

~ 30 ~

ii TUVALU

Pastel homes above the seacolours merging with the tideand a filigree of palmsadding to a fragile scene;tonight, the King Tide trampsthe land in heat of battle.

Milky waves of a tide on turnknew well that he was present,foot by foot, to cut his trenchencroaching into heaven;from afar we hear his roar,the eater up of acres.

A nightmare storm of hailstonesflays and turns the sea to grey,a wild cohort of pikemencoldly storming up the bay;a vanguard to his army -a deadly white tsunami.

Screaming, the wind’s villainytore at masts and canvas sails,steadfast trees bend to the might of its otherworldly force;a whirlwind walking the seawith malice in every blast.

Alas, today there’s no Seithenynii

to merit censure as the drunkardkeeper of a sluice, no gates of steelto assuage a sudden surge;instead stunned villagers dareto battle the white foamed flood,but in the King Tide’s hungertheir property is consumed.

Pastel homes beneath the seacolours merging with the tide,remnants of boats strew the bayall battered to small pieces;tonight, the King Tide trampedthe land in heat of battle.

~ 31 ~

iii SPITSBERGEN

Far on the sea’s horizon there’s a landwith mists amongst glaciers,and water tells a story:

white fort with her pure air a heavenunder rainbow colours,fragile grey-white pinnaclesdespairing, yet resplendent.

The narwhal don’t come in schoolsas they did in days gone by,their zeal stirring icy pools;

they just come here in ones or twoswhere dozens once did rendezvouswhen safety wasn’t an issue;

by the shore their songs were heardin the deep like sunken bellsresounding to the ice sheets.

A bear, her fur like frothy whey,is at the eastwind’s doorway,she gambols, childlike, in the snowin hunting her own shadow;prey is gone — sea pools don’t yieldfat seals that now live far afield!

In their snug lair out of sightmischievous pups quietly waitthrough the night for her returnback from her seashore hunting,and need in their hungry eyes:a feast to follow famine.

She still huntingfrom floe to virgin floe,along mosaics of ice,her hungry wailsechoing in cracks,until columns of tired legsrefuse and totteron dry land’s edge,short of the snug snow cave,and therethree pairs of ardent eyes scan the horizon

~ 32 ~

submissive, in vain . . .

From his secret hide a hunter stalksover an emerald hill, aiming his cameraon a gem-like panorama, the smileof an orange dawn burnishing the snow.

He sees the seagull’s gracesweeping, wavelike,in the midst of icebergs,and fragile grey-white pinnacles,timeless material, sparklingon slippery slopes;he hears above the cry of her long lamentthe wilderness’ chilling wailechoing her grief,and he knows it is the unseen teeth that chew right through the flesh.

~ 33 ~

iv RHEGEDiii

Urien, anathema is your namein the citadel of your glory,your kingdom fell into their handsand the monoglot gloom of their race.

Inferiors cast you out as noughtinto oblivion without a shrine,to stride like some stereotypein eternity’s hunting-grounds . . .

It was they, riff-raff, who pulled you downinto oblivion without a shrinewhere you forever wander, like a wraithin eternity’s hunting-grounds . . .

Autumn, and I meandering obscurelanes of your motherland,through withering habitatsand secret fields of the mind.

I lingered where the flashes of sunshine,spread over meadowswith their splendour of flowersand summer heat persisting.

I was there, back in the court of my kinin the centre of a throng,an ardent and noisy hordefully armed and excited.

To the muse of a man fashioning words,his strident voice bellowing the flames,powering the kilns that gild the shields,and tempering speech that sharpens arrows,and wild whisperings under the starsproviding hope for aspirations.

Discussing conflict was sweetin the gossip happy courtand heroes were burgeoningon the hedgerows of the land.

There were powerful foreststo be seen wandering freewith a vanguard long and keen,well armoured with leaves of steel;the valiant there were radiant

~ 34 ~

with the powers of our kin.

But then battle and butcheryand slopes turning slippery,no more thoughts of sorcery . . .

The castle a hall of flameand the spells of the bloodstained arrowson the floor, a sterile heap;in the grip of the alienthe dignity of your realmlost in the forests’ slaughter.

Urien, anathema is your namein the citadel of your glory,while I flee and seek a place to staywill there always be blood on the way?

~ 35 ~

vDUBAI’S ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS

(Artificial islands in the shape of the world map were created off the coast of Dubai)

‘For sale! Miraculous earthunder feet – this is your turnour wise friend (and also rich!)to make your mark on the world;you have the means to hold in the palm of your handinnumerable lands,our vanishing planet,Iceland to Wonderland, for a price . . . And what priceis proportionate to such an adventure?

By sinking your investmentwith us, you shall have peacebeside the tranquil waters.

The whole of Asia if you wantin the splendour of a six star hotel,and handsome homes for all your tribebecause there are, if you like,celestial villasto match all manner of pockets.

You can sail to sunbathe in Australia,in ten enchanting minuteson your yacht . . .

And when our temporal worldtotters and scatters,you shall be, our prudent friend,parading in a paradiseof artificial atolls.The World, Dubai.

For sale – miraculous earth!’

~ 36 ~

vi THE MOON

It goesfrom inch to slimmer inchaway from us; we at the mercy of the spindle,controller of the wheel’s course,spinning since time begancasting its spell on our world.

The little sister about to goout into the darkness;a journey that can’t, say prophets,ever be stopped.

And this is the warning — one day to comeour sky will be empty of light,an unearthly dome of black.

An end to the night gods’ torchkeeping their sights on us;the old man and his cheesy smilespreading enchantment,like glittering duston mortals’ roads,paled and retreated from sight.We can’t have ‘little children playing’iv

without the gleam of the globenor ‘one moonlit night’v

to forever inspire bards.

The end of our World,the ball became dullwithout force and without romance . . .

Then, one night when we are gonesomeone will gaze and shoot to the stars,penetrate the blackness and land anew, some glorious day still yet to come.

* * * * * * * * * *

~ 37 ~

iNotes

Gwydion is a magician who appears in the Mabinogion which are a collection of stories handed down by Welsh bards and storytellers over many centuries. They first appeared in print in the twelfth and thirteenth century.

ii There is a Welsh legend that Cantre’r Gwaelod, situated in Cardigan Bay, was protected from the sea by a huge wall incorporating floodgates. The land was inundated because Seithenyn, the person in charge of the floodgates, fell asleep from excessive drinking during a storm which coincided with a spring tide.

iii Rheged was an early-Welsh speaking kingdom of north-western England, possibly extending into south-western Scotland and as far to the east as Catterick. Urien was a 6th century king of Rheged and his reign is celebrated in the Book of Taliesin (early 14th century). He was assassinated with the consequence of Rheged being lost to his enemies.

iv A quote from a Welsh nursery rhyme- “Moon is bright/little children playing/thieves coming/knitting socks”.

v The title of a well known Welsh novel by Caradog Pritchard.