Hiberno-English, Ulster Scots and Belfast Banter

Acknowledgements

This monograph is based on the research I carried out for my PhD at Ulster University, therefore, I firstly express sincere gratitude to my PhD supervisor Dr Frank Sewell. He accompanied me on every step of the way of my research and writing with wisdom and generosity of spirit. The ex-cellent advice of my supervisor Professor David Barr has also been invalu¬able to this work. Thanks are also due to Dr Maxim Fomin whose interest in and enthusiasm for this book have inspired me.

I am grateful to Dr Eamon Maher and to Anthony Mason who sup¬ported me in the production of this monograph for the groundbreaking Reimagining Ireland series. It is a privilege to have the opportunity of authoring a theory which focuses on the heterogeneity of literary trans-lation. I appreciate that they have entrusted to me this endeavour which above all, foregrounds some of the rich, entertaining and insightful literary translations from nineteenth- century French and medieval Italian of one of our greatest Irish poets, Ciaran Carson.

Carson’s French translations from Rimbaud, including ‘As I Roved Out’ and ‘The Whatnot’, are reproduced by kind permission of the author’s Estate and The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, County Meath, Ireland from A. In the Light Of (2012) and B. The Alexandrine Plan (1998) and also by kind permission of Wake Forest University Press, Winston- Salem, North Carolina, USA. I am also grateful to The Gallery Press for granting me kind permission to use a quotation from Irish poet Derek Mahon’s words as an epigraph. Carson’s Italian translations from The Inferno (2020 edition by Apollo, an imprint of Head of Zeus, London, England) are reproduced by kind permission of the author’s Estate and the Susijn Agency. I am also indebted to the following inspirational writers who have granted me per¬mission to reproduce their striking words on translation as epigraphs for the some of the chapters in this book: Professor Michael Cronin, Liam Ó Broin, Professor Joseph O’Connor and Professor David Johnston. I am honoured that Irish artist Liam Ó Broin has most generously granted me permission to use his wonderful lithograph of Inferno, Canto V as the image for the front cover of this book.

My beloved husband John has sustained me through the writing of this book. He has been my constant support, providing me with intelli¬gent, logical advice as well as steadfast encouragement. I am also grateful to our four children Thérèse- Rose, John, Sarah and Beth for all their en¬thusiasm and positivity.

In this work, I remember my dearest parents, my mother Máire and my late father Malachy. I am also forever indebted to my grandmother Anna Finnegan (1913– 88), an Irish speaker, a scholar and a linguist. Her love of literature inspired me from my earliest days.

Finally, if it is possible to thank a place and a way of conversing, I must mention the city of Belfast and its rich diversity of language. Ciaran Carson’s city is also my city, a complex city in the process of its own reimagining.

‘Es besteht darin, daß die Sprachen einander nicht fremd, sondern a priori und von allen historischen Beziehungen abgesehen einander in dem verwandt sind, was sie sagen wollen.’¹

This book delves into the literary translations of Ciaran Carson (1948–2019). It explores the multifarious and inventive ways by which this Irish poet, writer and musician² reimagines translation. The translations selected for study from Carson’s work are The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (2002),³ from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (1306–21); The Alexandrine Plan (1998),⁴ from Arthur Rimbaud’s Les Cahiers de Douai (1870); and In the Light Of (2012),⁵ from Rimbaud’s Illuminations (1886).

Given that poetry often relies on implied meaning (implicature),⁶ what follows closely examines not only how Carson translates implied meaning from the source text, but also explores how he enhances, reduces, or even creates implied meaning of his own in the target text. The examination of Carson’s target text is carried out via a thorough investigation using an original and specifically designed neo-Gricean theory of translation which is hereinafter referred to as the Hybrid Gricean Theory (HGT).⁷

Belfast poet, novelist and musician, Ciaran Carson, a bilingual person,⁸ born into an Irish-speaking family,⁹ was the author of nineteen works of poetry and ten works of prose. He lived in Belfast for his entire life, seventy years. His affection for Belfast is obvious, despite the city’s difficult history, and much of his poetry is devoted to the city, including, for example, two of his poetry volumes, The Irish for No (1987) and Belfast Confetti (1989). He approaches this location in a personal way via eclectic descriptions of closely observed people¹⁰ (or even parts of people),¹¹ curious places¹² and objects.¹³

To analyse Carson’s translation techniques with some rigour, it is useful not only to have to have a thorough contextual knowledge of his life, interests and preoccupations as revealed by his writing, but it is also helpful to view exactly where translations are placed within his poetic oeuvre. In an interview with Carson, critic Jenny Malmqvist observed, ‘Translations, of various kinds, occupy a central place in your work’ (my italics).¹⁴ Carson’s response confirms that he sees the act of translation as integral to, and not distinct from, the writing of his entire body of work and the reading which informs it:

You might say that all writing is translation: the attempt to arrive at a suitable frame of words for what one has in mind, or what one thought one had in mind. And translation is a form of reading, whether of the original text, or one’s understanding of it.¹⁵

An overall review of Carson’s oeuvre is highly relevant since Carson sees all writing as a form of translation. Indeed, some critics have difficulty in distinguishing Carson’s original writing from his translations: Critic David Laskowski commented directly to Carson, ‘I happened to pick up TAP and it didn’t dawn on me that it was the translations. It seemed so much like your own work.’¹⁶

An examination of Carson’s work reveals significant results in terms of the position of translation within his work: Between 1976 and 2019, this prolific poet produced 923 poems,¹⁷ in his own book-length anthologies, 258 of which are translations and close adaptations. It is also significant that six of his nineteen volumes of poetry are complete works of translation.¹⁸ Carson’s translations are designed, of course, to be read but his invitation is to encourage the reader to involve themselves in the narrative, designing their own ‘take’ on the overall story. Literary critic Clive Scott argues that ‘the more passionately one reads a text, the more one feels oneself to be its momentary author, the more finished a work seems, the more it is without life’.¹⁹ Similarly, Carson’s readers are invited into the places where implicit meaning exists, to complete a story of their own, based on Carson’s implications. As he suggested, ‘maybe you make yourself the subject, if you had heard the story, because it’s a far better story if it happened to you’ (my italics).²⁰

The chapters which follow will show that Carson demonstrates a keen interest in ‘language in use’, regarding his own language and that of others.²¹ Key to an understanding of his translation methods is an appreciation that his writing is deeply contextualized within his own Irish culture and history, incorporating his practice of Irish traditional music and his affection for, and expert knowledge of, the city of Belfast. With his deep-rooted knowledge of the city,²² he explains, in an interview, that even from an early age, he had ‘aspirations to be a scholar of the time, know the place’.²³ Carson, in his writing, places himself into a narrative of the city, ‘it’s outside yourself, but you can put yourself into it’.²⁴ However, this in no way suggests that his work is insular, rather it is outward reaching in terms of language, place, time, embracing what Carson terms as a wide ‘universe of discourse’.²⁵ His desire to reach beyond his own culture and language(s) is underscored by the fact that he has demonstrated a keen interest in foreign languages, integrating an impressive variety of these²⁶ into a significant proportion of his original poetry. His enthusiasm for foreign languages and the fact that he was bilingual, led him to translate from at least nine languages: Irish, French, Latin, Welsh, Italian, Japanese, Greek, Romanian²⁷ and Russian.

The definition of what translation is may initially seem deceptively easy and easily dispatched with. After all, the Latin root of the word trans-ducere simply means ‘to lead across’.²⁸ However, many academics wish to develop this theme further and recognize the complexity of arriving at a clear definition. Jeremy Munday, for example, describes translation as a ‘concept’²⁹ rather than a word to define. Likewise, Tymoczko³⁰ has understood the impossibility of providing a simple definition for translation and she also uses the word ‘concept’. She has devoted over fifty pages of her monograph Enlarging Translation: Empowering Translators³¹ to the question, and although she does not finally arrive at a definitive categorization of translation, she describes the ‘openness’ of translation as being ‘at the root of the richness and vitality of the concept’.³² Stephen Kelly argues for the impossibility of finding a fixed definition for translation stating that, ‘translation – in its fluidity, uncertainty and provisionality – is a mobile practice, resisting fixity and rootedness’.³³ Kelly acknowledges that, due to its constant evolution, finding a definition for translation is an elusive process.

Translation scholars such as Lawrence Venuti³⁴ recommend a pluralistic approach to literary translation analysis via any given linguistics-based, theoretical framework. For example, although Venuti supports the value of the Gricean model of conversation (which prioritizes an understanding of the space between what we say and what we mean) for translation analysis up to a certain point, he also takes the view that in literary translation scrutiny ‘linguistics-oriented approaches [should] be qualified and supplemented’.³⁵ Therefore, the neo-Gricean theory, developed for this study, is specifically termed ‘hybrid’ because, although it relies on Grice’s original approach, it also employs pertinent elements from Translation Studies theories which are essential to supplement the linguistic theory for the determination and investigation of Carson’s translation techniques. This neo-Gricean approach facilitates an enriched reading of Carson’s target texts.

This book provides a pragmatic study. Notably, the study of implicature is regarded as a central topic in the linguistic area of pragmatics.³⁶ A definition of pragmatics is therefore required in this introduction. Linguistics scholar Siobhan Chapman³⁷ owns that in defining ‘pragmatics’, one can get into ‘disputed territory’,³⁸ however she advocates using the clear definition that pragmatics is ‘meaning in context’,³⁹ arguing that this ‘steers clear of many of the major controversies’.⁴⁰ Other translation studies and linguistics scholars concur with Chapman; both Mona Baker and Yan Huang have defined pragmatics as ‘the study of language in use’.⁴¹

A reading of Carson’s literary translations demonstrates certain trends which merit investigation – this has prompted the design of the HGT framework, devised as a tool to elucidate his translation methods. The purpose of this book, therefore, is to focus on strands of Carson’s target text language, regarding them as exemplars which demonstrate features of his translation techniques and which test out the usefulness of the HGT, thus allowing readers a way of identifying, categorizing, and describing what Carson has produced.

Although Carson has attracted a considerable amount of literary criticism and comment, comparatively little has been written about his translation work. The poet himself has often emphasized the significance of his translation practice in numerous interviews and readings,⁴² but perhaps partly because Carson has translated some of his work relatively recently,⁴³ there is a dearth of published research on his translations. Neal Alexander⁴⁴ and Clíona Ní Ríordáin⁴⁵ and Kathleen Shields⁴⁶ are examples of Irish writers who have discussed Carson’s translation methods. Aside from the latter writers, literary articles and essays on Carson’s work are quick to point out the modernity of his versions of Dante and Rimbaud, but the research to date has tended to focus mainly on the target text and does not, for the most part, provide a detailed examination of the original source text vocabulary. Such an approach, therefore, provides an incomplete story. Critic Edna Longley observes that ‘poetry does pick up Zeitgeist-shifts’,⁴⁷ so it must logically follow that in translation analysis, the zeitgeist of the original source text’s time of writing should also be considered. Translator David Johnston has argued for an acknowledgement of the bi-temporal (‘elsewhen’), and bi-local (‘elsewhere’)⁴⁸ aspects of literary translation:

When we translate from the elsewhere or the elsewhen our shifting gaze – the dialogical gaze of the translator – allows that object to be simultaneously of then and there, encased in cultural difference, but also belonging to the shifting here and now of our spectator. In other words, translation is not a filter between past and present, for the cultural other and the located self; it is potentially a prism that releases, that fires off in different directions a series of intercultural and intertemporal moments that challenge and enrich spectator reception and experience.⁴⁹

Johnston’s translation ideal is also core to this Carsonian study, which accommodates an interplaying dialogue between past (source text) and present (target text). To analyse such a dialogue, simultaneously congruent with the present and the past, the vocabulary and lexical choices of the source text must be understood temporally and in relation to those of the target text, as Johnston asserts.

Since, firstly, current Carson criticism does not, for the most part, address an etymological consideration of the original French and medieval Italian vocabulary and, secondly, there is a scarcity of inquiry relating to cross-linguistic differences between the source language and the target language and the differing implicatures which these can produce, this book will utilize a full consideration of selected source text vocabulary. In this way, applying the proposed HGT to Carson’s target text response to the source text will allow a more fruitful study. To that end, the etymology of Italian source text vocabulary, for example, will be examined from the source language sources, with the aid of such invaluable resources as Treccani which has comprehensively published the Enciclopedia Dantesca (1970–5)⁵⁰ online. Italian Dantean scholar Natalino Sapegno’s insights from his detailed studies on the vocabulary in the Commedia, along with his historical and literary account of the fourteenth century will also provide useful insights for the analysis.⁵¹ An examination of the nineteenth-century French source text vocabulary, relevant to the Rimbaldian source texts, is aided, for example, by means of TLFi: Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé⁵² and Le Dictionnaire Érudit de la Langue Française.⁵³ The book examines how, by employing a variety of techniques, linguistic, intuitive and even inventive, to capture the elusive and time-related essence of the original, Carson translates implied meaning from medieval Italian poetry and nineteenth-century French poetry.

At this juncture, justification will be provided for the selection of Dante and Rimbaud in this investigation of Carson’s translation of implicature. In the first place, Dante’s poetry has already been identified as an excellent study for implied meaning as observed by Eliot, Pound and Sayers, which suggests that it will provide fertile ground for a study via the HGT. Secondly, Dante’s medieval poetry has been analysed by multiple source language scholars who provide a rich critique and informed insight useful to this study. Thirdly, Carson’s expert local knowledge of Belfast and first-hand experience of life in Belfast throughout the Troubles helps to orientate and explain specific points of geographical, historical and political interest described in Dante’s source text to Carson’s reader. The narrative in Dante’s source text also facilitates a transposition to the cultural context within which Carson’s target text is to be understood.

Carson has translated from four French poets in his oeuvre: nineteenth-century poets Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé and twentieth-century poet Follain. Of these, he has produced book-length works consisting of his translations of the work of Rimbaud and Follain. In interviews, he has described the enduring effect⁵⁴ of nineteenth-century French poetry on his psyche: ‘The music of the poems of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé had been hovering at the back of my mind ever since I encountered them in a school anthology in 1965, when I was seventeen. TAP was an attempt to pay homage to that memory.’⁵⁵

Therefore, Carson’s translations of Rimbaud are investigated in this study since he remains a poet of enduring interest and wide appeal. Rimbaud may not be of equal stature to Dante, who, although writing in medieval times, displays what Osip Mandelstam describes as a ‘contemporaneity [which] is inexhaustible, measureless, and unending’,⁵⁶ but he is, nevertheless, an enormously influential poet, ‘one of the most destructive and liberating influences on twentieth-century culture’.⁵⁷ It is also notable that Carson has translated from Rimbaud at various points in his writing career, ‘Le Bateau ivre’ (1993),⁵⁸ TAP (1998) and the book-length ILO (2012). This return permits a consideration of how Carson’s strategies in translation of Rimbaldian implicatures have developed over two decades.

The main elements of the book comprise an Introduction, Chapters 1–7 and a Conclusion. Below is a synopsis of the chapters which follow.

Central to Chapter 1 is a consideration of the development of literary translation practices and an establishment of where Carson’s methods are situated within this domain. In Chapter 1, translation theorists relevant to Carson’s work are positioned within the evolving context of translation theory. The exploration described throughout the chapter is an initial step towards creating an analytical theory for Carson’s translations. Chapter 1 then turns to a discussion on historic translation debates. Current translation theory is built on a development of significant statements from the past from such scholars as Cicero (106–043 BC), Horace (65–8 BC), St Jerome (342–420), and, more recently, Schleiermacher (1768–1843). The insights of these scholars are examined to demonstrate how their foundational ideas inspired modern translation scholars to develop their own theories. The practice of looking into the past, even so far as the Classical period, is advocated by Schulte and Bignuenet: ‘Translation theories […] need to be seen in an historical context. They were not born ex nihilo’.⁵⁹

Having examined the origins of Translation Studies and the theories of historical translation scholars, Chapter 1 then turns to more recent debates. Key translation scholars Venuti, Baker,⁶⁰ Tymoczko and Benjamin⁶¹ are identified as most relevant to Carson’s practices.

Firstly, the chapter outlines that Carson employs Venuti’s foreignizing approach⁶² which is proposed as a method whereby the translator remains close to the source text, source culture and, therefore, the intention of the source text writer. Features of the foreignizing approach include exotic vocabulary, borrowings,⁶³ calques⁶⁴ and disruptive word choices. Idiosyncratically, Carson combines these (in the target text) with local Irish slang and vernacular.