Gabrielle Wang

on translating Antoine-Vincent Arnault

Translating this poem was a delicate process. I often faced frustrations about how to best interpret and reflect decisions made by the author that were only grammatically correct in the French way–the way the words were intended. Quite literally mirroring meanings was necessary, for the subject-description order of words in French could be considered the direct opposite of English grammar. As a result, this mirroring often resulted in a loss of context and, consequently, accuracy of comprehension. A sense of suspense that could only be established in the original placement of phrases was also impossible to mimic with English while maintaining the laws of grammar. Thus, I intermittently broke various rules in my best efforts to preserve meaning, which may have resulted in a cacophony of mismatched grammar interpretations. I sincerely hope that my efforts to preserve meaning did not disturb the peaceful constancy in the parallel structures artfully posed by Antoine-Vincent Arnault at his time of writing. Reversing these phrases felt like upending all of Arnault’s careful deliberation, for poetry is inherently an art of precision and intention. As a migrated teenage admirer of French poetry, I often doubted that it was my place to take this beloved artist’s work into my young hands. Unqualified and equipped with the level of grammar enabled by a lifetime of geographical isolation, I frequently cringed at my elementary attempts to match the beauty of the original words. Furthermore, prioritizing meaning and intention meant rewriting the poem through the eyes of the original poet, thus sacrificing my own preferences in the process. In the end, this poem, line by line, is a series of one-sided compromises between the poet and myself, the translator.