Limits and possibilities of total translation in Jerome Rothenberg

Abstract This article offers a revision of the concept of total translation, a guiding principle upon which US poet-translator Jerome Rothenberg developed his work (1931-). The approach used here consists of an analysis of Rothenberg's practice as a translator, based on a reading of essays and translations by him, identifying and contextualizing some of the theoretical challenges he faced. One of the proponents of the movement known as ethnopoetics, Rothenberg was part of a generation that, from the late 1960s onwards, highlighted the poetic quality of Amerindian songs and narratives, drawing attention to how Indigenous verbal arts are organized in terms of parallelism, prosody and paralinguistics in the expressive forms under discussion. In the analysis developed in this article, I examine Rothenberg's translation of "The 13th Horse-Song of Frank Mitchell," a Navajo horse-song, which he did in partnership with ethnomusicologist David McAllester.

摘要：本文对全翻译（total translation）这一概念进行了修订，该准则是美国诗人翻译家杰罗姆·罗森伯格（Jerome Rothenberg，1931—）从事创作所遵循的核心指导原则。本文采用的研究路径为：通过研读罗森伯格的文论与译作，剖析其翻译实践，梳理并厘清其曾面临的若干理论难题的相关语境。作为民族诗学（ethnopoetics）运动的倡导者之一，罗森伯格隶属于20世纪60年代末以来的一代学人群体，该群体着重发掘美洲印第安人歌谣与叙事的诗学价值，并提请学界关注：在本次探讨的表达形式中，本土口头艺术如何通过平行结构、韵律及副语言学（paralinguistics）特征实现组织架构。在本文的分析框架内，笔者将考察罗森伯格与民族音乐学家（ethnomusicologist）戴维·麦卡利斯特（David McAllester）合作翻译的纳瓦霍（Navajo）骏马歌谣《弗兰克·米切尔的第十三首骏马歌》（"The 13th Horse-Song of Frank Mitchell"）。