Nathanial Tarn and Neruda: Some Thoughts on Translation

I had originally come onto Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu with the intention of writing about a quote and what it means. Ultimately, I decided to do that in a slightly different manner than I had initially anticipated. I was not always a fan of Nathaniel Tarn’s translations, and considering that I took notice of them in this way more than once, I decided to do my blog post on how some of these translations sort of annoyed me because of their slight inaccuracies (And if anyone believes that I am incorrect or otherwise wrong, I am open to changing my mind!)

The first line of the entire poem is one which particularly stuck out to me, though there are many:

“Del aire al aire, como una red vacía, iba yo entre las calles y la atmósfera, llegando y despidiendo” (16).

Without looking back at the translated quote, I would translate this as:

“From air to air, like an empty net, I went between the roads and the atmosphere, arriving and saying goodbye.”

Now, though “despidiendo” does mean saying goodbye, it could definitely be a euphemism for leaving in general. In this case, I could substitute “saying goodbye” for leaving. Nevertheless, Nathanial Tarn translates the sentence like this:

“From air to air, like an empty net, dredging through streets and ambient atmosphere, I came” (17).

There is no mention here of any sort of leaving or actions that come from it, even in the lines that follow. Why would Tarn omit this? To say “I came and left” would still sound smooth. Even if saying that would make the translation not sound smooth, I’d prefer to know I was reading something closer to what the original author had intended. At the very least, we are being provided with the Spanish for transparency, so I am able to make these critiques in the first place.

Ultimately, I’ve determined that our version of The Heights of Macchu Picchu is impacted by numerous forms of interpretation. Neruda makes assumptions about what Machu Picchu is supposed to represent, and tries to transmit this to his readers in ways they can understand. Does that mean that Neruda himself is translating, in a way? At the same time, Nathaniel Tarn transforms these words even more, perhaps getting rid of any semblance of what Machu Picchu is actually about. It really makes me think about how many texts I’ve read where I didn’t have the opportunity to compare with its original language, either because of lack of understanding or opportunity in general. How do we determine whether the information we receive about anything is accurate?