Poet and translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetry Peter Cole led a crowd through what he referred to as a "mediation" yesterday, dealing with the questions of ethics that come up in the process of making sense of translation.
Cole passionately discussed his own experience as a translator and the importance of managing relationships with authors when dealing with two different cultures.
Cole delivered the keynote address at the Art and Ethics of Translation Symposium, the first event from Tufts' fledgling Center for Humanities.
"We know more or less what is meant by the art of translation, even as we argue over tactics and taste," he said during the discussion, which took place in Ballou Hall's Coolidge Room. "Poetry ... is not what is lost in translation, but what is preserved."
According to Cole, translators have an ethical mission. He zeroed in on their responsibilities. When managing choices of text to translate and deciding how poets are represented, "one needs to respond and be responsible," he said.
"The categories often begin to blur, aesthetic questions soon become political and then personal," he said.
He emphasized the importance of sympathy in translation and the duty of the translator to make the writing sing after it is translated.
"Bad translation is senseless, ... lacks tactility [and] produces tactility that we find merely tacky," he said.
"The fact is that the best translators ... ultimately rely on instinct as they translate. They let themselves be led by a feel for the words ... when they come together well, a peculiar energy is created ... Words must augment and not neutralize each other."
As Cole moved through his discussion of the process of translation, he often complemented his own poetic perspective with words from a number of inspirational intellects from the past. "'Ethical excellence,' says Aristotle, 'is not something that comes naturally, it is the result of something called accustoming," he said.
While Cole asked and answered many of the underlying questions that deal with the ethics of translation, all the queries boiled down to one: "Where does the pleasure come from?"
He emphasized that translation requires the mind and body; it is an act of a whole person.
"The heart," he said, "must be prepared."
Cole has won many awards, published two collections of poetry and been recognized for translations of the Hebrew Golden Age.
The symposium will continue this morning at 10 a.m., when panelists Lydia Davis, Suzanne Jill Levine, Jay Rubin and Natasha Wimmer will look further into the "Art and Ethics of Translation."
