Foreign news : poems in Irish
- Submitting institution
-
University of Aberdeen
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 141776883
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Gallery Press
- ISBN
- 9781911337294
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- October
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Research process
I have translated extensively from Irish before, but my work on Foreign News differed from previous projects in significant ways. When translating a classical Irish text, I have other translations available for contrast; with Foreign News I was often the first reader of the poems being translated. I would produce a version only for the author to revise her original, creating ripple-like patterns of to-and-fro between original and translation. Occasionally, I would receive an authorial revision to the Irish text and decide I preferred my current English version. In this I am following the lead of other modern translators such as Paul Muldoon. It is both a process of divergence from literal translation, but also of affiliation to the modern tradition of adventurous and roaming translation.
Research insights
There is a well-established tension in translation studies between ‘naturalized’ and ‘foreignized’ translations. Through self-consciously subversive strategies such as imperfectly aligned translations – from a now-discarded primary text – I worked to foreignize my texts, as also in small gestures such as the use of Scots words, which work to disrupt the assumed closed circuit of the English-Irish dyad. For me, translation always opens out onto a multiplicity of choices beyond those ultimately selected, and I am keen to convey a sense of this halo of possibilities, hovering somewhere above the final text.
Dissemination
While the primary credit for the volume must belong to Aifric Mac Aodha, its dissemination via my translations has led to a large uptick of interest in Aifric’s work, up to and including its featuring in the Cambridge History of Irish Women’s Poetry, which I co-edited with Ailbhe Darcy of Cardiff University. Both Aifric and Ailbhe read at the University of Aberdeen’s Grierson Centre, which I co-direct, in 2019, further disseminating this work here in Scotland.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- Yes
- English abstract
- *Foreign News* is a volume of translations from Irish-language poems by Aifric Mac Aodha. The translations were produced in close collaboration with the author. I would translate a draft of a poem, only for my collaborator to revise the original in the light of my translation, requiring me to revise my translation. The result was a deeply satisfying piece of work, which has already begun to attract attention from researchers in the field, including a write-up in the *Cambridge History of Irish Women’s Poetry*