30. A Translation Experiment: Waterfalls I Have Known
Waterfalls I Have Known in English, Japanese, Persian, and Latin.
Something I’ve enjoyed messing around with in the past is using Google Translate to generate new wordings for a text. Below is a short story I wrote, ‘Waterfalls I Have Known’, in its original text, followed by a version that has been translated via Google into Japanese and back into English, and then a version that departs even further from the original by going from Japanese to Persian and finally back into English.
I quite like the relatively subtle changes in the Japanese (‘It is a kind of underground, slow-moving music’) — though the fourth paragraph has an unexpected departure to the first-person voice before reverting back into the third. The most intriguing change came in the Persian translation, as Google Translate unexpectedly changed the gender of the character throughout: He has been in love with the waterfall since he was a child and has visited it many times.
Looking into it, I found that Persian is a grammatically gender-neutral language — the word او can mean he, she, or it. Which was surprising, and took me back to my high-school Latin classes, in which I learned with surprise that Latin grammar genders everything as masculine, feminine, or neutral. Curious about this, I did an English-to-Latin translation of the original text, and ended up with the text at the bottom of this email, which also turned out to be the least coherent — the accidental poetry of the mistakes of a machine — but also filled with fruitful new phrases: You could hear music in the white noise of the falls, deep and slow, he says, a kind of music… .
Waterfalls I Have Known (Original)
I visited her once, off on that island of hers.
She was working on a manuscript called The Feelings You Get From a Waterfall. It was about various waterfalls she had visited — and she had visited a lot, having been something of a waterfall freak since she was a kid.
She said she’d seen 72 in total. The book she was writing was her way of documenting each of them — not so much their location or appearance, but their aesthetic effect.
She said some waterfalls made her laugh. Some made her feel like a little girl playing with her feet in a pool of cool water. Some made her feel like she was looking at some medieval painting depicting the dim, moss-clad quiet of a grotto. Others made her cry, bringing her to a painful awareness of the sundered connection between man and nature, between we creatures and our Creator.
And there were some waterfalls, she said, that made you want to close your eyes and feel the frigid mist play on your face, the droplets catching in your eyelashes. You could hear music in the white noise of the falls, she said, a subterranean and slow-moving kind of music, a wild symphony bubbling up from the waterways of the earth.
Waterfalls I Know (English to Japanese to English)
I visited her island once.
She was working on a manuscript called “Feelings from Waterfalls.” It was about the different waterfalls she visited. She has been a waterfall enthusiast since she was a child and has visited many times.
She said she saw 72 total. The books she was writing were her way of recording each location and its aesthetic effect rather than its appearance.
She said some of the waterfalls made her laugh. Some of them made me feel like a little girl playing with her feet in a pool of cold water. Some made me feel like I was looking at a medieval painting depicting the tranquility of a dark, moss-covered cave. Others made her cry and made her acutely aware of the torn connection between humans and nature, between us creatures and our Creator.
And there were some waterfalls that made you want to close your eyes and feel the frigid mist on your face and the water droplets catch on your eyelashes, she said. She said she could hear music in the white sounds of the waterfall. It is a kind of underground, slow-moving music, a wild symphony that bubbles up from the earth's waterways.
Waterfalls I Know (English to Japanese to Persian to English)
I visited his island once.
He was working on a manuscript called "Feelings of Waterfalls". It was about the various waterfalls he visited. He has been in love with the waterfall since he was a child and has visited it many times.
He said he saw a total of 72 cases. The books he wrote were his way of capturing each place and its aesthetic effect rather than its appearance.
He said some of the falls made him laugh. Some of them made me feel like a little girl playing with her feet in a cold pool. Some made me feel like I was looking at a medieval painting depicting the serenity of a dark, moss-covered cave. Others made him cry and made him acutely aware of the broken bond between man and nature, between us creatures and our Creator.
And there were a few waterfalls that made you want to close your eyes and feel the cool mist on your face and the water drops on your eyelashes, he said. He said he could hear music in the white sounds of the waterfall. It's a quiet underground kind of music, a wild symphony coming out of the earth's waterways.
I know of your cataracts (English to Latin)
Once I landed on it, this is the island.
He was working on a manuscript called Emotions I came out of the waterfall. It was about the various waterfalls that he had visited — and he had visited a lot, having had some waterfall sport since he was a kid.
He said that he had seen at all 72. The book he was writing was the method of each document — not so much the location or the appearance, but the aesthetic effect.
He said one of his waterfalls made him laugh. Some people think of it as a girl playing with her feet in a pool of cold water. Some feel that it looks like a medieval painting depicting a dark, mossy, quiet cave. Others have made her cry, her painful consciousness of the disconnected connection between man and nature, between us creatures and our Creator.
And there were some waterfalls, he said, that make you want to close your eyes and feel the cold mist playing on your face, and the drops catching on your eyelashes. You could hear music in the white noise of the falls, deep and slow, he says, a kind of music, a wild symphony bubbling up from the waters of the earth.
If you like this newsletter, please do tell a friend. And if you want more, may I humbly recommend to you my first novel, The Forest Museum.
