Foreign language quotations

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Ichipod
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Post by Ichipod »

I am working on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and as a preliminary to the first stanza is a quote from Dante in Italian or Latin (I must confess I do not know which). It would appear that I have 3 options :

1. Leave it out;
2. Murder the pronunciation in the original language;
3. Make an English translation (readily available from a number of sources).

What do you think? Which would be most appropriate? I am leaning towards the English translation because it does at least provide a little more insight as to the message of the poem.

Dave
thistlechick
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Post by thistlechick »

I vote for #2 *grins*

better yet, let's see if we can find someone who knows how to pronounce the words and give you a crash course in the pronunciations... kind of like when actors have to learn a dialect or other language for a movie....
~ Betsie
Multiple projects lead to multiple successes!
LibraryLady
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Post by LibraryLady »

Yup, go for it! I think someone already did Prufrock for one of the short poetry collections so you could give that a listen to see how they did it!
Annie Coleman Rothenberg
http://www.anniecoleman.com/

"I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice." ~Whitman
Ichipod
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Joined: January 24th, 2006, 5:53 pm
Location: Hayward, WI - USA - Planet Earth

Post by Ichipod »

Thanks for the comments.

I have done some more research and found a number of versions of this particular work including 2 in our collections. Of the versions I have found only 1 includes the "prelude". The vast majority jump right into the line, " Let us go then you and I...". Even T. S. Elliot left the Dante passage out of his recording of the poem.

Therefore, in the hope of avoiding insulting the speakers of this particular langage (Italian? Latin?) and thereby avoiding an international incident I shall - in this case - follow the author's intent and skip it. :D

I also note that the version which includes the passage is from our 2nd collection and was read by Peterson/Hart. It was indeed well done.

Thanks again.

Dave
vee
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Post by vee »

Yeah I definitely went with number 2 while recording Beyond Good and Evil. I really should have taken a more useful language like French or Spanish, instead of Latin; doesn't help squat with pronunciation!
Chris Vee
"You never truly understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother." - Albert Einstein
raynr
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Post by raynr »

Oh yes, "Beyond Good and Evil", a conglomeration of different languages. I praise myself that I had not a big problem with the German parts :wink:, but the other languages are definitely a massacre. Especially the Greek: there is a slight difference between knowing Greek letters from math classes and pronunciate a whole sentence written in Greek :D.
"Everything in the world exists in order to end in a book." (Stéphane Mallarmé)
Gesine
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Post by Gesine »

It's always possible to post here in Help Wanted - I think for most languages we should now have a volunteer (or someone will know someone) who can record the word/phrase and post the recording to the reader. :)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination circles the world." Albert Einstein
kri
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Post by kri »

Gesine wrote:It's always possible to post here in Help Wanted - I think for most languages we should now have a volunteer (or someone will know someone) who can record the word/phrase and post the recording to the reader. :)
Absolutely!! One could even ask amongst their fellow recorders of a certain book. I'm always available to help anyone with French pronunciation, being a French minor.
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