Terjemahan Karya, Karya Terjemahan (I).

Pembuka bicara: Kalau tidak silap saya, inilah pertama kalinya blog saya yang tidak seberapa ini memperkenalkan karya puisi terpilih berserta terjemahan bahasa Melayunya. Penterjemahan karya kesusasteraan, terutamanya sajak dan puisi, merupakan antara bidang yang paling mencabar dalam kerjaya penterjemahan. Seseorang penterjemah sastera itu bukan sahaja memberi perhatian kepada perbezaan bentuk penyampaian puisi dan sajak antara dua bahasa yang beliau kerjakan, beliau juga akan menelusuri minda dan pandang dunia penutur kedua-dua bahasa, mendalami budaya yang tersemat dalam kata-kata puisi dan peka dengan nuansa dan nada kiasan. Erti kata lain, penterjemah menempatkan diri sebagai pembaca yang terharu dengan merdunya puisi dan sajak sebelum beliau sendiri pula memainkan watak pujangga mengolah rasa yang dialaminya dalam sebuah bentuk karya yang orang lain pula berupaya merasainya.

Penterjemahan penulisan bahasa asing ke dalam bahasa Melayu sering kali dikritik dan dicerca, dianggap kurang mutunya berbanding karya asal dan bagi terjemahan karya sastera, kurang puitis dan kurang ataupun hilangnya makna yang karya asal sampaikan. Tidak dapat dinafikan bahawa penterjemahan bahasa Melayu masih ada ruangnya untuk perkembangan dan permatangan, sekiranya pandangan sebegini atas sebab munasabah ataupun tidak terus berlarutan dengan khalayak ramai memandang enteng sebarang karya terjemahan bahasa Melayu, karya-karya terjemahan bahasa Melayu yang adanya bermutu akan dihanyut kritikan membanjir, terus diketepikan tanpa dibaca dan dihargai. Sekiranya kita perlu menongkah arus negatif ini, karya-karya terjemahan bahasa Melayu yang baik perlulah diangkat dan disuluhi tumpuan supaya khalayak ramai boleh kenali karya terjemahan bahasa Melayu. Karya yang masih boleh diperbaiki pula juga boleh diberi perhatian juga, memberikan cadangan membina dan mengasah kemahiran penterjemah itu.

Adakah masukan blog ini akan menjadi titik tolak untuk memperkenalkan karya terjemahan yang muncul di lingkungan awam tetapi masih memerlukan daya tolak untuk memperluaskan lagi penerimaannya? Kita nantikannya...

Aku Mati Demi Keindahan - (penterjemah awanama buat masa ini sehingga dipastikan)

Aku mati demi keindahan, namun baru saja
Menyesuaikan diri di pusara ini,
Tiba-tiba ada seorang yang mati demi kebenaran terbaring
Di liang sebelah.

Dia bertanya perlahan kenapa aku gagal?
"Demi keindahan," jawabku
"Dan aku demi kebenaran, kedua-duanya sama;
Kita saudara," katanya.

Dan begitulah, seperti dua saudara bertemu di waktu malam,
Kami berbual dari kamar lahad masing-masing,
Sampai lumut menyelaputi bibir kami,
Dan melitupi nama kami.

I Died for Beauty - Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, -the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

Afterword: It has been a while that I write most of a blog entry in bahasa Melayu and it's definitely getting rusty. Anyway, Emily Dickinson: the late 19th century American poet and recluse best known for her penchant for the macabre but also best remembered by many Malaysian secondary school students for There's Been a Death in the Opposite House. I came across I Died for Beauty and its translation, Aku Mati demi Keindahan over a photography exhibition titled Unpack Repack: A Tribute to Ismail Hashim (1940-2013), incidentally the very first programme that goes on in the coming George Town Festival 2014 officially kicking throughout the month of August. Being a tribute exhibition, it features mainly selected lifelong photography works and life of Ismail Hashim all the way from black and white prints that he painstakingly made in his own darkroom (recreated as a part of the exhibition) to a digital slideshow featuring the last batches of photos he took using the very digital camera he carried along on his untimely passing August last year due to motorcycle accident. It is right before the digital slideshow that I Died for Beauty/Aku Mati demi Keindahan is featured which made the selection of this particular poem particularly poignant.

I have learnt from the his works that he was once a lecturer in Universiti Sains Malaysia over School of the Arts teaching graphic design (a couple of the photography works exhibited were captured in Universiti Sains Malaysia in front of Perpustakaan Hamzah Sendut I, different snapshots of students walking along...in 1996. Another one is with his Graphic Design students), he was social activist which appreciate humanism (which was espoused in his approach to photography) and was one of the founder for Penang-based Aliran, one of the first modern post-independence civic movement in Malaysia which he also designed various Aliran Monthly's covers. Certainly an interesting figure and a great loss for his untimely passing. It's also interesting to know that Universiti Sains Malaysia is quite a hotbed of intellectual rigour from time to time and I wonder how much of USM still is today.

Just as a closer, this post is just going to be about highlighting selected poetry translation work in Malay and one thing I like about this exhibitions is that all of the explanations, quotations of Ismail Hashim and even quoted literary work (even an excerpt from Ulysses is quoted) are done bilingually in English and bahasa Melayu thus providing a rich corpus for comparison of original and translated text. Speaking of which, am still wondering who's the translator for the quoted literary works in the exhibitions as well as the explanations whether it's by Ismail Hashim himself (some of it like the photo above features written manuscript right beside it but I forgot to give it a detailed look) or by the curating team (after all, I am sure contacts in USM will be very useful). As for photos from the exhibition itself...you will have to wait until I upload them on Facebook.