Greetings (and translation struggles) from Durban, South Africa

This is Al, penning the inaugural post at our new blog, http://scitplay.blogspot.com, all the way from the subtropical shore of kwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

We in SCIT intend the blog to serve as a public forum and source of news and information concerning our ongoing project of translating, performing, and sharing our passion and interest in ancient Greek and Roman drama. The blog is of particular importance to me this year since I am researching from afar. A significant pleasure in working on this project during last year’s production of the Acharnians was the camaraderie and synchronized effort that theater often brings to its practitioners. I regret having had little to do with the translation of the Acharnians—a translation that surprised and impressed all of us. By as much as I am disappointed that living Africa for the next five months will prohibit me from attending the usual SCIT events (planning sessions, translation gatherings, academic colloquia, auditions, etc.), I am equally excited to take a larger role as a translator and blog contributor. The internet is truly magical.

Now, to the translation itself.

My assigned chunk of translating begins with the entrance of the Clouds—divine parthenoi (maidens), whom I imagine dressed in pillows, glitter, and perhaps bikinis. We had decided to make the play’s setting modern day Stanford, situated on the San Francisco peninsula, half-way between San Jose and San Francisco and in the heart of what, over the past 40 years, has developed into Silicon Valley. Topicality lends success to comedy. I was therefore faced with the problem of how (I) to characterize the Clouds, and (II) how to “translate” references to Athenian cultural heritage and practice into their modern equivalents.

I. Characterizing the Clouds
Those of us in the Bay Area are, like the ancient Greeks, accustomed to a geography that causes a number of micro-climates. The combination of a large and relatively static Pacific Ocean, mountain chains, and a large bay of shallow water, creates a meteorological scenario where climates change dramatically within a few miles or, in the mountains, at a elevation difference of as little as 50 feet.

From the Stanford campus, one can often see a continuous line of clouds crowning the ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains, though there appear no other cloud in the sky. It was this local meteorological phenomenon which I chose for the play’s Clouds to represent. Accordingly, I chose to add some local color, absent in the original, to my translation. Also foregrounded in my translation, whenever possible, is an intellectual vocabulary. I translate euagêtos as “brilliant” rather than “bright” (though both perform well), and hypsêlos as “lofty” rather than simply “high”. A replacement for the Greek epithet baruacheos, “deep-roaring,” was needed; I substituted “mighty Pacific.” Included below for comparison is my first run at a translation, along with the Greek original and Jeffrey Henderson’s more literal translation:

My translation (beta)
Everlasting Clouds,
Let us rise up and manifest our brilliant, misty nature,
From our father, the mighty Pacific,
To the redwood-plaited peaks of lofty mountains…

Aristophanes:
aenaoi Nephelai,
arthômen phanerai droseran phusin euagêton
patros ap' Ôkeanou baruacheos
hupsêlôn oreôn koruphas epi
dendrokomous...

Jeffrey Henderson’s translation
Clouds everlasting,
Let us arise, revealing our dewy bright form,
From deep roaring father Ocean
Onto high mountain peaks
With tresses of tree…

II. "Translating" Athenian references
A more pressing problem is the “translation” of references to Athenians customs, festivals, heroes, and politicians. The second time the Clouds sing, their subject is Athens, the crowd’s home town. The Clouds are sure to mention some of Athens’ most famous personages, customs, and monuments, citing Kekrops (its mythical founder), the Eleusinian Mysteries, the city’s impressive temples (i.e., the Parthenon), its many parades and festivals.

Thinking one’s way around appropriate analogues is a distinct joy for the translator, yet the pleasure is, more often than not, mitigated by knowledge that the comparison “isn’t quite right”. Since my translation has conflated a number of locales—San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Stanford, and Bay Area more broadly—I am able to pick and choose the most apt comparanda.

Kekrops
In the Athenian popular imagination, Kekrops was held to be the first king of Athens. Claimed to be the product of the attempted rape of Athena by Hephaistos, whose seed fell upon the ground, Kekrops was a hybrid creature (half man, half snake), who, being born from the land itself, had an irrefutable claim to autochthony which he bequeathed to his descendants. In poetry, Greek cities were often called after their founders (i.e., Thebes = “The Land of Kadmos”, Thebans = “Kadmeians”), and the Clouds’ high-flown address is perfectly mock-tragic.
Unfortunately for the translator, due to its long and periodic colonial and missionary history, no city in the Bay Area has a famous foundational figure. Virginia may have John Smith, and Detroit, Cadillac, but California has a different sense of history. Leland and Jane Stanford could serve the purpose well (like Greek heroes, their remains are location-sensitive, entombed in an on-campus mausoleum). In the end I decided to choose a more public figure, Apple C.E.O. and founder, Steve Jobs. This is, I think, just for a cheap laugh—pairing irreverence with a social-economic commentary on the influence of Fortune 500 C.E.O.s. Jobs is still alive, has never to my knowledge held political office, and not a mythic hero of the dim past (but let’s check back in 1,000 years of technological advancement!). Yet who else could serve as such a figurehead of Silicon Valley commerce and culture?

Eleusinian Mysteries
The Eleusinian Mysteries, a religious rite relating to Demeter and her daughter Persephone, gave its practitioners some purchase on a better afterlife. The carefully-guarded (and by modern taste, rather profane) mysteries were performed in Eleusis, a town a handful of miles to the west of Athens. The mysteries were taken seriously, if not universally believed.

Finding a modern analogue to the mysteries in the Bay Area is near impossible, though the “Mystery Spot” in Santa Cruz, made famous from its popular bumper-sticker, certainly crossed my mind. Sticking with a technological theme, I chose Google (headquarters in Mountain View, CA), since the inner-workings of their ubiquitous search engine and advertising are rather mysterious to the lay internet-browser. To incorporate a festival with Google, I chose the annual Bridge School Benefit concert, headlined and organized by long-time Woodside resident, Neil Young.

Parades and Festivals
For the other Athenian parades and festivals, I turned my attention north toward San Francisco, where there are numerous parades each year including world-famous Gay Pride and Chinese New Year parades. One of the best modern analogues to an ancient Greek participatory festival, to my mind, is the Bay to Breakers walk, populated by people in costume, often with liquor bottle in hand. Though these parades are, perhaps, less serious and less religious than their Athenian forebears, and therefore likely to cause laughter in the modern audience where there was none in the ancient, I believe the popularity and the participatory nature of these San Francisco events gets us closer to the Athenian practice than, say, New York’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.

I’ll wrap this up with another comparison between my translation, the Aristophanic original, and a more literal English translation.

My Translation:
Rain-bringing Virgins,
Let us come to the shimmering Silicon Valley,
To see the lovely, yuppie-filled land of Steve Jobs.
Where incalculable web-searches are made,
Where the Google campus opens up its food court
During Neil Young’s Bridge Benefit concert.
Where there are free concerts for the masses,
Bridges and buildings that reach to the sky,
And the all-important Pride Parades
With well-accoutered dancers for the bystanders,
And parties all year round!
And in the spring, there’s the joy of Bay to Breakers—
the costume competitions between the journeyers,
and the bassy groove of boomboxes.

Greek Original:
Parthenoi ombrophoroi,
Elthômen liparan chthona Pallados, euandron gan
Kekropos opsomenai poluêraton:
Ou sebas arrhêtôn hierôn, hina
Mustodokos domos
En teletais hagiais anadeiknutai:
Ouraniois te theois d^rêmata,
Naoi th’ hupserepheis kai agalmata,
Kai prosodoi makaôn hierôtatai
Eustephanoi te theôn thusiai thaliai te
Pantodapaisin hôrais
Êri t’ eperchomenôi Bromia charis
Eukeladôn te chorôn erethismata
Kai mousa barubromos aulôn.

Henderson Translation:
Rainbearing maidens,
Let us visit the gleaming land of Pallas, to see the ravishing country
Of Cecrops with its fine men,
Where ineffable rites are celebrated, where
The temple that receives initiates
Is thrown open during the pure mystic festival;
And where there are offerings to the heavenly host,
Temples with lofty roofs and statues,
Most holy processions for the Blessed Ones,
Well-garlanded victims for the gods, and feasts
In all season;
And with spring comes the grace of Bromius,
The rivalry of melodious choruses
And the deep toned music of pipes.