1. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS Presented by: Mültezem BOYDAŞ
OCTAVIO PAZ
TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
Presented by: Mültezem BOYDAŞ

2. OCTAVIO PAZ Octavio Paz was born on 31 March 1914 in Mexico City.
He became one of the founders of the journal, Taller (Workshop), a magazine which triggered the emergence of a new generation of writers in Mexico as well as a new literary sensibility.

3. OCTAVIO PAZ
In 1962, Paz was appointed Mexican ambassador to India which is a milestone in the poet's both life and work. His most known works he has produced during his stay in India are The Grammarian Monkey and East Slope.
In 1980, he was named honorary doctor at Harvard.
Recent prizes include the Cervantes award in 1981 which is the most prestigious award in the Spanish speaking world - and the American Neustadt Prize in 1982.
In 1990, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
He died of cancer on April 19, 1998, in Mexico City.

4. OCTAVIO PAZ
Paz is a poet and an essayist. His poetic structure is backed up by the belief that poetry constitutes "the secret religion of the modern age." An outstanding prose stylist, Paz has written a prolific body of essays, on poetics, literary and art criticism, as well as on Mexican history, politics, culture and theories of literary translation which we will be dealing with mostly.

5. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
"Translation: Literature and Letters" is an outline of Paz's discussion of poetry and poetic translation.
As we learn to speak we are learning to translate; the child who asks his mother the meaning of a word is really asking her to translate the unfamiliar into the simple words he already knows.In this sense, translation within the same language is not essentially different from translation between two tongues, and the history of all peoples parallels the child's experience." (Paz, 152)

6. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
Paz reminds us that "Language is not universal; rather, there is a plurality of languages each one alien and unintelligible to the others." (Paz, 152)
"All people can communicate with and understand each other. And they can do so because in any language men always says the same thing." (Paz, 152)

7. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
Octavio Paz argues that translation was once a tool to reveal the commonness, and " a guarantee of the existance of the spiritual bonds"(Paz, 152
Modern age a tool to reveal the differences
Each Nation is imprisoned by its language, social classes and generations

8. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
Each translation is unique, however, it is the translation of another text. All texts are original since each translation has its own characteristics.
Rejects the idea that poetry is untranslatable
"many of the best poems in every Western language are translations, and many of those translations were written by great poets." (Paz, 155)

9. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
Most poetry translators focus at one element of the poem at the expense of others
unbalanced translation
"the translator has the right to differ organically, to be independent, provided that independence is pursued for the sake of the orginal in order to reproduce it as a living work." (Bassnett, 85)

10. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
Translators "should make themselves invisible behind the text and, if fully understood, the texts will speak for themselves."(Paz, 158)
A good translator's aim is to go parallel but not identical to the original poem.
"The good translator of poetry is a translator who is also a poet or a poet who is also a good translator." (Paz, 158)

11. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
Poetry
Plurality of meanings
Immobile words
Not interchangeable
Prose
Single meaning
Words can be replaced by other words (interchangeable)

12. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
"A poet chooses a set of words, combines them and contructs his poem which is made of irreplaceable and immovable characters."
A translator's starting point however is not choosing words or combining them like the poet, but the fixed language of a poem which Paz defines as the frozen but "living" part of the poem created by the poet.

13. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
1st phase = reading / criticising "each reading is a translation; each criticism is an interpretation."(Paz, 159). 2nd phase = composing the poem (!) As the poet composes his poetry, he does not know where his poem will lead to. The translator knows the boundaries of his poem since it has to convey the message of the original text.

14. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
"translation and creation are twin processes."(Paz, 160)
the most creative periods of western poetry was accompanied by intercrossings between different poetic traditions.
creation has mostly been triggered by influence from other works belonging to different traditions and authors.

15. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
"At the end of the last century, French poetry amazed and scandalized Europe with the solo begun by Baudelaire and brought to close by Malarme. Hispano-American "modernist" poets were among the first to develop an ear for this new music; in imitating it, they made it their own, they changed it, and they sent it on to Spain where it was once again recreated. A little later the English language poets performed something similar but on different instruments in a different key and tempo: a more sober and critical version in which Laforgue, not Verlaine, occupied the central position. Laforgue's special status helps explain the character of Anglo-American modernism. Pound and Elliot, following Laforgue's lead, introduced criticism of symbolism in to symbolism itself. This critical perception produced poetry that was not modernist but modern, and thus they initiated, together with Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and others, a new solo-the solo of contemporary Anglo-American poetry. Laforgue's legacy to English and Spanish poetry is a prime example of interdependence between creation and imitation, translation and original work."(Paz, 161)

16. TRANSLATION:LITERATURE AND LETTERS
CONCLUSION
In his Essay Translation: Literature and Letters" Octavio Paz provides many usefull information which are pivotal for the designing of literary translation. He defends the translateability of poetry and honors the process of translation as a different but still original and creative activity. He discusses the challanges of poetic translation and praises the interdependence between creation and imitation, translation and original work in the process beginning from the original poem to a new, original translation.