Alexander Pfau, Amelia Glaser Final Paper

 Alexander Pfau

Amelia Glaser

Keith Vincent

02/05/2024

Ukraine and Russia, two countries that have been at war for years, and at odds for centuries. One cannot hope to understand Ukrainian literature without taking into account the effect of war. Such is the case with the poems Amelia Glaser translates. A translator of Yiddish and Russian as well as Ukrainian, Glaser is a professor at UC San Diego. With a special interest in poetry, Glaser has published a number of books. Her own works, like Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine, and translated works, such as A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails. Glaser’s critically acclaimed translational skills coupled with an extensive knowledge and background in slavic culture have led to her consistent success in the last decade. These laurels have made Glaser a recognized scholar, leading to her invite to BU this past month. The people of Ukraine have banded together through the realm of social media, with poetry taking on a more powerful meaning as of late. Glaser’s translations have allowed the world to not just read the poems, but to sympathize with the Ukrainian people. In doing so, her efforts extend far beyond the realm of literary scholarship, rather they create an escape for a culture being stamped out of existence

As the first speaker of the semester, I would have expected that her talk would be about the details and processes of translation, but rather, it was a closer analysis of some specific poems she has previously translated, and of her method of creating a database from poems posted on Facebook - the platform she used to gather a majority of her data. As someone unfamiliar with translation, much of what she talked about was much more nuanced than I had ever imagined translation could be. One of Kruk’s poems referenced the “Shadow Theatre”, an ancient Greek story which was also the name of Glaser’s presentation. The story discusses how things are not what they seem when veiled by a curtain. She uses this to describe how the meaning of words changes as the war continues. Words like water, which Ukranians were once able to take for granted, were now hesitant; the water could be tainted or pipes could be destroyed. When words change, they cannot be directly translated from language to language, making translation even harder. Glaser went in depth on some specific languages and how the differences between Ukraine and English created a barrier for translations, while other times matching perfectly. Another example was, she was trying to find a word for adhesive tape and recording, which was the word tape in English. Having a perfect fit like that is rare, but makes translating extremely rewarding at times.

The war in Ukraine has had a profound effect  on the lives of the poets living there. To create a frantic sense, poets like Kruk  and Kiva shorten their poems, and relinquish extensive vocabulary for a more straightforward point. Luckily, this allows wartime poems to come across languages more easily. Since they are much easier to translate, the poems are able to be seen by a wider audience, and poets are able to make money off of them. Though the criticism of this method is understandable, the current world situation mandates a blunt, straightforward style that can be widespread instead of localized. This allows the world to understand what Ukrainians are going through without creating an intellectual barrier between languages. Evident within these poems across languages is the theme of empathy. Humanity is notorious for killing each other to achieve meaning, more so than any other species. Our unrivaled destructive power is paralleled by a conscious wish to protect those we care about in the face of unrelenting danger. To demonstrate this idea, Ukrainian poets have created individuality from the masses. Instead of “Ukrainians” or “them”, each voice is recognized with a story to tell, which allows people across the globe to connect meaningfully with them in the face of unrelenting cruelty. This is yet another reason why easily translatable poems could be the way to continue forward, since they can reach a larger audience.

Instead of often unreliable AI tools, Glaser and her group of students go through each post and decide for themselves whether or not it’s a poem. They have sorted the poems into an archive of around 2000 pieces, each of which have been further categorized by the students. Each category is then analyzed by AI to find how Ukrainian poetry has evolved throughout the years of war between them and Russia. One of the more interesting things Glaser and her students  found was that the use of Ukrainian language translations has increased dramatically since the start of the war. This, at least in theory, demonstrates an effort to establish Ukrainian cultural independence, something that has almost never existed as Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union before 1991. On the contrary however, use of geographical vocabulary has increased in poems. These include cities and countries outside of Ukraine, for example, Paris and Spain. Changes like these seem to signify an outward looking country rather than one focused on stopping a war from within itself. A classmate noted that “… addressing the outside world has allowed Ukrainian poets to bring the war to the attention of the world”.  Perhaps Ukrainians are looking to other places to literally escape the war, or to escape it through metaphor, drowning their readers in imagery rather than sorrow, and in doing so, continue to reach other areas of the world online through social media.

Many of us, while we did appreciate her talk, were confused at times about the content. This is of course, no fault of her own, but Megan McDowell’s presentation the following week created a much more welcoming and open introduction to translation, which was a very nice follow up. On the topic of difficult terminology, we discussed how an extensive knowledge of former works is integral to being a good translator. The Shadow Theatre story above is one example, but other examples permeate the field of translation as well. For example, as a Japanese translator, knowledge of general Japanese history is needed, but the Tale of Genji is constantly referenced in work to this day, making it an integral part of a translator’s toolbox. Staying on the topic of Japanese translation, our class noticed that much of Glaser’s translations didn’t rhyme. A poem doesn’t have to rhyme, and it’s much harder to keep the rhymes in translation, but in some languages rhyming is trite. Take Japanese, where every sentence ends with a verb, which usually have similar endings. Because of this, there is no reason to rhyme, since they mostly sound the same. 

The difficulties of translation also come naturally with some languages. Obviously, when two regions are closer to each other, their languages tend to be similar. (This is not always the case, but it is for the most part, think romance languages and Russian and Ukrainian). This, understandably, leads to challenges while translating across the globe. While AI tools are available, they often do not capture the artistry of a poem, and are more suitable for novels or short stories. So, how did Kruk get around this? She could hire a really good translator and collaborate with them for days over a few poems which may or may not have the same end meaning, or, they could make them easy to translate. Easy to translate does not mean lacking meaning, it just means a dilution of some literary techniques and references poets often use that are difficult to replicate through different languages. For example, references to older Ukrainian literature or Ukrainian specific events in the case of this poem. Poets that do this are, of course, going to be criticized for not putting forth their best work, or commercializing their product for a wider audience. 

Halyna Kruk herself says:

I tried to create several

levels in the poem

a seemingly simple and

playful visible part, and something that appealed to

an advanced and philologically engaged reader

with a rich cultural background. Working with a

complex form was an exciting thing to do for me.

With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, there

was neither time nor opportunity to write this way.

As stated above, the shallower translations are a product of the invasion. However, to make her poems visible worldwide, she made them simpler. As a poet, her income is inconsistent, especially with the war. So, furthering her work and cranking out more poems instead of fewer, better crafted poems not only represents the erratic wartime, but is also an economical choice as well.

Continuing with the class blog posts, there are some specific points I’d like to highlight. For example, Dina’s post mentioned that Glaser found prose more difficult to translate than poetry, which is a massive surprise. This does, however, make sense, since the bar for translating poetry is often lower because of the abstract nature of its structure; whereas prose translations often have to be more accurate to preserve the meaning of the text. But, far and away the most important quote I’ve seen came from Lia, who “thought it was very important that Glaser emphasized that as translators and, simply, as people who don’t live in Ukraine, we need to acknowledge that our understanding is mediated by several filters– in the end, we are only able to see the shadows in Plato’s cave”. Referring to the Shadow Theatre above, Lia underlines the chasm between us and those at war. Here in the West, we cannot fathom how it’s like to live in a warzone, to experience what it is like to be bombed day and night. So, I would like to end with this. We cannot possibly understand the horrors of war in our sheltered lives. But we can honor Ukrainian culture by sharing their poems and trying to understand through the blurred lens we have. I am grateful to  Amelia Glaser for coming, and I look forward to seeing her speak again.

Works Cited

Glaser, A. (2020). Songs in dark times: Yiddish poetry of struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine. Harvard university press. 

Vincent, K. (n.d.). Sign in. Blogger. https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/8586638365489372286 

Kruk, H., Glaser, A., & Ilchuk, Y. (2023). A crash course in molotov cocktails. Arrowsmith Press.