Can I tree be mean, petty, miserly? And what would that mean? What kind of shade or shadow would that specific tree cast at midday in Goiânia, where Brazilian poet Suene Honorato was born in 1981? These were some of the first considerations when we began translating Reasoning, an intriguing and fascinating poem full of irony, dark humour and deceptively simple language.
The poem is included in Honorato’s first full collection, N’oré îukaî xûéne!. The title comes from an old Tupi expression meaning, ‘They won’t kill us!’ This was particularly relevant during the translation workshop when considering questions about the languages, registers, and political intent behind the poem.
We spent considerable time discussing the poem’s opening lines: ‘Na hipótese de fumar à sombra/de uma árvore mesquinha’, a visual and philosophical image that also appears in other poems in the collection. The word hipótese (hypothesis) led us to discuss the register (more colloquial in Portuguese, less so in English) and how best to convey the word’s conversational qualities within the line. Options ranged from ‘On the chance of’ and ‘In the event of’ to ‘On the hypothesis of’. The consensus was that ‘On the off chance of’ would render a similar meaning and intent to the source text, maintaining a sense of the everyday.
Another interesting discussion arose when translating the lines ‘Mas se fosse por mim/,ah se fosse se sesse.’ The ‘were/was’ (se fosse) verb options were important because they led us to think more carefully about internal rhyme, assonance, and how better to convey a sense of playfulness in the following line. The repetition of sounds in ‘se fosse se sesse’ was captured in the slightly nonsensical ‘, ah if only ownly own,’.
Finally, after much consideration, the group decided to leave the last line ‘cof cof cof cigri porco dio’ as it was, emphasising the important elements of surprise, mischievousness and language specificity originally intended by the poet.
-Leo Boix, Poet- Facilitator
