Talk:Polish alexandrine

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English formal equivalent

I think it would be useful to include a formal equivalent in English. 2 of the texts are already translations, and a 3rd already has an English version (albeit in iambic pentameter). So the best candidate is the first text, by Kochanowski. My first shot is below:

Moja wdzięczna Orszulo, bodaj ty mnie była
Albo nie umierała lub się nie rodziła!^[1]

My Ursula, so charming, I brood in my sighing:
Better never born, darling, than live, so soon dying.

References

^ Jan Kochanowski, "Tren 13" (Lament 13).

@Anagram16: comments? I know the meaning is not perfect, but the chief intent is to be a formally exact representation of the verse form (as much as English will allow, anyway), while getting as close to the substance as possible. I have made the following assumptions (any of which may be wrong, so please help me out!):

Based on a very bad Google translation + the Dorothea Prall translation, I'm at least in the ballpark for meaning.
I understand the verse constraints.
The verse constraints currently stipulated (caesura, feminine endings, and feminine rhyme) are the only ones that apply -- e.g. if any other syllables, other than the last 2 of each half-line, should be stressed or unstressed, I have failed to take them into account.

I also think a scansion would be helpful, like this:

 o o     o   o o   S x | o o   o    o  S x
Moja wdzięczna Orszulo, bodaj ty mnie była

(I'm assuming those "i"s are consonental?) Yes? No? Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 05:21, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Talk:Sebastian Grabowiecki

– Phil wink (talk) 14:51, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Phil wink, I think, it is not bad to use iambic pentameter in English translation of Polish tridecasyllable lines, as the pentameter is the most common English measure and so is trzynastozgłoskowiec in Polish. As You know, twelve-syllable lines occur in English almost only in the Spenserian stanca and it was ridiculed by Alexander Pope: A needless alexandrine ends the song/That like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. Browning used alexandrines in Fifine at the Fair and the poem seems unreadable for many poeple. Of course, you can imitate in English 13-syllable line with caesura and feminine ending but it is like imitating Greek hexameter - the result is very artificial and not to be used in longer poems. Another question - the letter "i" in Polish is used to soften sounds. The word niebo (meaning "sky" or "heaven") is disyllable: nie-bo. Soft n can be represented by digraph ni or ń. Every nation has an orthography by its own. In Italian it is gn (Spagna), in Spanish ñ (like in España) and in Portuguese nh Espanha. In Polish Hiszpania (Hisz-pa-nia). Thanks once again (Anagram16 (talk) 10:38, 21 July 2016 (UTC))[reply]

@Anagram16: I have no quarrel at all with your assertion that -- for literary translation -- iambic pentameter is the best vehicle. And if this were an article on, say, Jan Kochanowski or Polish poetry or Elegies, then I would probably want #1 a published translation by a competent poet, #2 that was quite accurate in meaning, #3 conveyed the tone of the piece, and #4 suggested the form, if possible. But because this is an article about the form itself my criteria are just about reversed. Readers should be given the chance to grasp (as well as English allows) what a Polish alexandrine sounds like. The Polish texts (at least for me) actually do not help in this respect. I can read a line of German, not knowing what it means, but being reasonably confident that my pronunciation (and therefore my sense of the line's meter) is in the ballpark. No so with Polish: there are just too many unfamiliar letters, letter uses, and letter combinations, and I pass out halfway through the line, with no sense that I was even close. So I do hope you'll see the value of presenting English-speaking readers with a formal equivalence, and help me improve this one if it needs it. Thanks. Phil wink (talk) 15:36, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Phil wink, I made a reply on Your Talk page. (Anagram16 (talk) 16:01, 21 July 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Since that did not include an objection, I'm moving my translation to the article. Phil wink (talk) 16:29, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Phil wink, I tried for some hours find such examples that would be easy readable for speakers of English. But it is not easy to find some lines without ę, ą in real Polish verse. Perhaps these two lines from poetry of Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński are not offensive to an English ear.

O, zielony Konstanty, o, srebrna Natalio!

Cała wasza wieczerza dzbanuszek z konwalią;

O, you, green Constantin, you, silver Natalia

All your supper is a pitcher with (flowers of) convallaria.

I know, our Slavic languages and alphabets look and sound horribly to people in the West, but it can't be helped. (Anagram16 (talk) 19:43, 21 July 2016 (UTC))[reply]

I'm sorry if I set you on a wild goose chase. My point was not that the Kochanowski lines were bad in any way. My problem is more general: while I am not against putting non-English verses in articles like this, I think we have to be cautious about how useful we expect them to be for an audience which by and large will not be able to read them. Therefore every time we do include them, I see it as our duty to provide some key that helps readers understand the significance of the text. Often, the point of the text is chiefly content, so the key will be a quality translation. In this case, the chief point is the structure, so the key will be a formal equivalent or a scansion or (as currently) both. But I think in no case is the "friendliness" of the original a major factor -- we can never assume that an English speaker will get anything out of a non-English text. "Cała wasza wieczerza dzbanuszek z konwalią" is not necessarily better than "近体诗". But if you like the above text, off the top of my head, a usable formal paraphrase might be:

O, zielony Konstanty, o, srebrna Natalio!
Cała wasza wieczerza dzbanuszek z konwalią;

You, Constantine the verdant, you, silver Natalia!
Your supper's but a bowl of lily of the valley.

There's a slant rhyme, but that's not terrible, and the formal equivalence depends upon "bowl of | lily" being a valid caesura, which normally wouldn't fly in English, but maybe in Polish? Just a thought. Phil wink (talk) 23:18, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Jan Kochanowski, "Tren 13" (Lament 13).

[1]