It DON'T matter - how it all went wrong

[ForYourSmile]

A good initiative Tchoco! A nice way of turning the topic.

In Catalan:

La meva mà ha explorat
El meu calaix com una rata
En un experiment de laberints.
Lector, puc dir amb seguretat
Que no hi ha un calaix més buit
En tota la cristiandat!

[ForYourSmile]

... and in Spanish:

Mi mano ha explorado
Mi cajón como una rata
En un experimento de laberintos.
¡Lector, puedo decir con seguridad
que no existe un cajón más vacío
en toda la cristiandad!

(Translation of A. Resines)

[Tchocolatl]

Laurie, you are right, I don't know the whole story. In this case, I'll follow my own advice : I don't put my nose in this and I make silence in this regard.

Please stay and contribute again, your posts are great!

****

Wow! FYS

Well, I received the English text in PM. So I guess the sender prefer to remain there. OK. No problem. But I have to bring the thing here in order for the game to goes on.

My hand has explored
my drawer like a rat
in an experiment of mazes.
Reader, I may safely say
there's not an emptier drawer
in all of Christendom!

Now, in German? In Croatian? In Greek? In Snow? In etc? In etc?

[tomsakic]

Moje su ruke istražile
ladicu kao štakor
u labirintu.
Čitaoče, mogu slobodno reći
da nema praznije ladice
u čitavu kršćanskom svijetu!

-----
I don't know do you see the special Croatian characters.
Now, this little verse shows all problems of translating. Is the "drawer" = "underwear" (as my dictionary claims under 2.), or simply "a folder, directory" in a desk or closet? The context is very important (it *does* make /disgusting/ sense that hands have investigated the contect of underwear like a rat in labyrinth), so if there were previous verses in Tchoco's earlier post (in which you see that the drawer is used for keeping the opium - hence his madness as he ran out of it, it seems ), who knows what would I get. Also, having Spanish, French and Polish translation is helpful, so I can compare using my dictionaries ("cajón" did help ). That's why I like to have Leonard's bilingual books.
Then, a rat in an exsperiment with labyrinth - what does that mean. A rat is put into a labyrinth to see how he's doing in that experiment? In translation that doesn't make much sense (even in Polish and Spanish, I'd say), as it does in English, so I decided - for now - for simple "like a rat in labyrinth" (or I could use "like a rat lost in labyrinth"?).
And then the last line, "in whole Christendom". It doesn't seem normal in Croatian, like "In the whole of Christianity!" (what's Meriam-Webster's solution for paraphrasing "Christendom", also) - so "there's no such drawer in the whole Christian world!"

[ForYourSmile]

I returned to read the whole poem, I have changed drawer into underwear and the result is very different . Well, the poetry is open.

[Tchocolatl]

I have the feeling that I arrive in the middle of a party now! Guys, I hope you won't go with you underware on your head, at some point! Ah! To translate a poem is to read it in a complete other way. It is to put hands in it, not just eyes one it. Truly fun. And here as it is just a forum, there is no offense done, if we go with drafts (so to speak). The exercice worth to be done, even if it is just to realize how a "simple" poem is complicated. Who is next? Go on!!

Tom, a Wow for you too. Do you know that I went only for the last lines of the poem because I find them more easy to translate? Cohen is difficult to translate.

"How like a black-eyed Susan
blinded into ordinary daisy
is my pretty kitchen drawer!"

This part would have been much too...

Ah! No. No easy guy, this guy. Not the one to go with easy things as turquoise with tortoise, for example.