[RADIOLAB INTRO]

[ACTOR: It's time now to practice some very useful phrases. I'll say them first, you repeat, and we'll learn together. Let's begin.]

JAD ABUMRAD: This is Radiolab. Today? Translation.

[ACTOR: It's time to begin.]

JAD: We'll have eight experiments in translation, transcreation.

[ACTOR: Lesson number one. The best poem was by my mother. (Repeated in another language.) Now you try.]

JAD: Hello?

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Hi there.

JAD: Hi!

ROBERT KRULWICH: Is that Doug?

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Yes.

ROBERT: Oh boy!

JAD: So this episode was inspired by a guy named Doug.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Doug Hofstadter, professor of cognitive science, Indiana University, Bloomington.

JAD: You may know him as the guy who wrote Gödel, Escher, Bach, which was a hugely influential book in certain circles, published in, I think, 1979. But we actually got interested in him thanks to our producer Lynn Levy, because of an obsession of his which predates that.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Sixteen. I was sixteen.

JAD: The year, 1961.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I was taking a French literature class, and one day I came across this poem.

JAD: A tiny little poem that kind of sat right in the middle of the page.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Like a long thin sausage. Vertical. You know, three syllables per line.

JAD: So it was super-skinny.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: And 28 lines long.

JAD: And long.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: And it was delightful. It was very cute and funny. I fell in love with the poem immediately and memorized it. I still know it by heart.

JAD: The poem was basically a get-well card. It's written by this guy Clément Marot, who was a poet in the early 1500s.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: At the court of a queen.

JAD: And he wrote the poem for this queen's daughter. She was seven or eight and she had gotten sick.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: The flu or something.

JAD: And this poem was supposed to cheer her up.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: And—and I thought it was very sweet.

JAD: Could you say it in French?

ROBERT: Yeah, let's just hear it first.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Okay. It's called "A une Damoyselle malade." To A Sick Damoyselle, so to speak.

ROBERT: A sick young lady.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "A sick young lady. Ma mignonne, je vous donne le bon jour; le séjour, c'est la prison. Guérison recouvrez, puis ouvrez votre porte et qu'on sorte vitement, car Clément le vous mande. Va, friande de ta bouche, qui se couche en danger pour manger confitures; si tu dures trop malade, couleur fade tu prendras, et perdras l'embonpoint. Dieu te doint santé bonne, ma mignonne."

LYNN LEVY: Oh my God, you must have gotten so many chicks when you were 16.

JAD: I know! That was really ...

ROBERT: [laughs]

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Exactly the opposite. I was—I was—I wish.

JAD: Okay, so he reads the poem, files it away deep in the corner of his mind. Fast forward about 20 years, he publishes his first book. It becomes very popular and the publisher decides to have it translated.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Into a number of languages, including French.

JAD: And that process, which took years ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: It put me into the frame of mind of thinking, what kinds of crazy things can happen when you translate crazy texts? And all of a sudden one day ...

JAD: That poem popped into his mind.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: And I said, "Ah, there's a challenge! Let's try to do this!"

JAD: And when you say challenge, like, what was it?

ROBERT: What is the—what is the challenge?

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Okay. What I meant was to ...

JAD: So here's the thing. He says you got this poem ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Ma mignonne, je vous donne le bon jour ..."

JAD: And if you just focus on the words, it's basically—it's just this guy talking to a younger girl saying, "Hello my dear. I'm sorry you're sick. Being sick is like prison."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Le séjour c'est prison."

JAD: "I, Clément, wish you to open your doors, get out into the world."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Car Clément le vous mande."

JAD: "Get out of bed. Eat some jam."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Confitures."

JAD: "So you don't look so pale ..."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Couleur fade ..."

JAD: "... and lose your plump shape."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Et perdras l'embonpoint."

JAD: You know, it's sort of like, "Get better. Here's to your good health."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Dieu te doint Santé bonne, ma mignonne."

JAD: But just saying those words in English misses the whole spirit of the poem.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: The tone, the lightheartedness ...

JAD: And—and this is key for Doug—it also ignores the poem's form.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Its wonderfully catchy ...

JAD: Little sausage shape on the page. The fact that the lines ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Rhyme. You know, AA, BB, CC, DD. And the first line, "Ma mignonne," is identical to the last line, "Ma mignonne."

JAD: So it sort of has the feel of a palindrome?

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: It has the poet's name in the middle of the poem. Clément le vous mande. Oh, and I—did I say three syllables per line?

ROBERT: No, you didn't. Not yet.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Of course. Three syllables per line. I mean, that's crucial. And then also 28 lines long. So all of those things added up to a set of constraints, you might say, on me.

JAD: So Doug sat down and got to work, and quickly became embroiled in the question of, like, how do you translate this poem? And along the way he even began to make little grids of possibilities for different lines of the poem. For example ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Va, friande de ta bouche, qui se couche ..."

JAD: Like this line that basically says, "Don't wallow in bed."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I had a lot of possibilities, and I'll just read you the little diagonal display here. "Instead of spurting blood in bed. Instead of burping in your bed. Instead of bursting out in bed. Instead of lurking in your bed. Instead of hurtling out of bed. Instead of hurting there. Instead of squirming in your bed. Instead of slurping slop in bed. Instead of burning up in bed. Instead of turning blue in bed."

JAD: On and on.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: And I came up with—you want me to read my first translation?

ROBERT: Yeah, please.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "My sweet dear, I send cheer, all the best. Your forced rest is like jail. So don't ail very long. Just get strong. Go outside. Take a ride. Do it quick. Stay not sick. Ban your ache for my sake. Buttered bread while in bed makes a mess. So unless you would choose that bad news, I suggest that you'd best soon arise. So your eyes will not glaze. Douglas prays health be near, my sweet dear."

ROBERT: Oh. So Clément is now Douglas.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Yeah, Clément became Douglas. And I like the word ...

ROBERT: I noticed that jam became bread, though.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Buttered bread.

ROBERT: Buttered bread.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Buttered bread. Yes. Well, I just figure jam and jelly, they are words, but the words represent concepts, and the concepts have a kind of a halo around them. I mean, when you talk about jelly, you're implicitly talking about bread and things that you spread it on.

JAD: Oh, how interesting!

ROBERT: Some people like to stick their fingers in jelly. No bread needed.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Okay. Okay, fair enough.

JAD: Feeling like he hadn't quite nailed it, Doug sent the poem to one of the guys that translated his first book into French.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Yeah.

JAD: A guy named ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Oddly enough, Bob French. And Bob was ...

ROBERT: [laughs]

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I said, "Hey Bob, can you do it?" And Bob said, "Well, I'll give it a try."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Fairest friend, let me send my embrace. Quit this place, its dark halls and dank walls. In soft stealth, regain health. Dress and flee off with me, Clément who calls for you." Very different in tone, and really quite marvelous.

JAD: He got the pale face in there. He got the jam. He put Clément's name in the middle.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: But at the same time, it didn't have the lightness. The tone is much more ancient.

JAD: Which you could argue, well, it's an ancient poem. But Doug says no, no. There's a bigger problem.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: It was 30 lines long. So extra long. And 28 was a sacrosanct number.

JAD: But that's just two lines though.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: No, no, no, no, no. Clément Marot wrote a three-syllable poem of 28 lines that rhymed wonderfully, and the essence of his poem was a form rather than a—than a message. That is, the message was, "Get well."

JAD: Which is pretty simple, but Doug would argue no, it was the form. That's what made the thing funny and charming. And so the question for him was, who could get the feel but nail the form? And to make a long story short, he ended up sending the poem out to, like, 60 people.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Doctoral students ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Who my sweet, I entreat. One regard. Oh ‘tis hard, dear recluse."

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Colleagues, friends ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Chickadee, I decree a fine day."

JAD: He even got his wife to do one.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Dart away from your cage and engage in brave flight, so you might flee the coop."

JAD: That was all bird-themed.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Hope you swoop into ham, apple jam and French bread."

ROBERT: Did you go running around from town to town saying, "Hey, I got a little poem. Anybody want to give it a translation?"

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I certainly did. I am a person of binges. This began a binge, you might say.

JAD: And that binge ended up becoming a 700-page book filled with translations of this poem.

ROBERT: Go ahead and read the best one now. This is the best one.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Yeah, right. Right. No, this is not the best one.

ROBERT: It is the best one.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: No, stop it. Okay, here we go. Okay. Okay.

JAD: This is also one of his, but like the 20th one he did.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Pal petite, gal so sweet. Hug from Doug. Some dumb bug dragged you down. Zap that frown. Feel the urge, bugs to purge. From the scourge, you'll emerge in a trice. Sound advice from—ahem—Doug/Clem. So smash flu. Come. Yoo-hoo. Come you who live to chew. Sheets eschew. Sweets let's chew. Pop a tart. Make your heart palpitate. Clem's mandate. Sure hope God cures your bod head to feet. Pal petite."

ROBERT: "Sure hope God cures your bod!" [laughs]

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: [laughs]. I must admit it's humorous.

ROBERT: Yeah!

JAD: Although not the best, he says.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I—I do want to get to my mother's translation, because my mother's was somehow—I'm gonna have to look it up here. Where was it? Where in the world was it? This book is long and complicated and ...

JAD: This one from his mom he says, came along years after he started.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Here it is.

JAD: And he thinks it might be the winner.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "Hi toots. Get well. Hospital's prison and prison's hell. Get well. Flee your cell. Clément's orders in a nutshell. Go pig out. Open wide your mouth. Keep those sweetmeats going south. Unless you're hale, you'll turn pale. Lose ooh-la-la that wiggles your tail. God restore good health to you my little flower, mon petite chou."

JAD: Wow! That's cool!

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Notice that she doesn't begin the poem and end the poem with the same line. She doesn't have 28 lines. She has maybe about 16 lines. She doesn't pay any attention to syllable count.

ROBERT: You must've hated this one.

JAD: Yeah, this ...

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I did. My first reaction was, "Oh, Mom. No, Mom. Come on! What are you—come on! Didn't you pay any attention to the form?" And she said, "I did what I wanted to do. This is my feeling, you know, just that's what I did." And actually, you know, I have to say it has stood the test of time. It has some kind of pizzazz that no other one ever had.

JAD: But she didn't respect the form, she didn't do the syllables, she didn't rhyme it the way it's supposed to rhyme, she didn't give you 28 lines, she even, like, halved that, practically, is that a translation then or is that just a mom—I don't—what is that?

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: "One hundred flowers bloom." As I got more and more deeply into this poem, my philosophy started to become Chairman Mao's statement, "Let one hundred flowers bloom." In other words, you can look at it from so many angles, and each new angle enriches it and makes it more fun.

LYNN: All right, but you can't read a hundred versions of every poem that you want to read.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Okay, okay. I agree. You're right.

JAD: It does make me question though, the rules of engagement in a way.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: There are no rules. There are no rules. It's all informal.

JAD: Okay, but there's jam in one of the translations and ham in the other. And they're—like, they're factually different food substances. Somehow, like, the facts of the poem shouldn't be negotiable, should they?

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: What is—what do you mean by a fact? I mean, a fact about the poem is that it was written by somebody in French. It's not in French anymore.

ROBERT: Wait, but now here's what Jad, I think, was really wondering, is the mission we thought was, what was he saying, not what do we make of what he's saying? What are the flavors of what he's saying? What are the variants of what he's saying?

JAD: And even beyond that. Like, isn't the expectation that you as a translator are giving me him? Like, hey, this this man is lost to time and now suddenly I get to experience him. But if a hundred flowers are blooming, that somehow feels like I'm not getting him at all.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: Obviously, you're getting to the question of what is translation and can it be done? My—my feeling is that even though these translations that we've heard are all very different, they all show something about Clément Marot.

JAD: Doug's basic point is that like any person, it's kind of a universe. They're too big to comprehend in their entirety, and so any translation of, say, a poem or whatever is only gonna get you a tiny piece of that person, a tiny refraction.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: I mean look, we have one photograph of Frédéric Chopin. One photograph.

JAD: And in that picture he's scowling.

DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER: What did Frédéric Chopin really look like? What was his smile like? You know, you look at a photograph of Chopin and you say, "Oh, this is what Chopin looked like." Well, no. Chopin looked like many things. Even the very day that that photograph was taken, he had thousands of different expressions on his face. But then, what about a year earlier or 10 years earlier? I mean, knowing Chopin is a very complex thing. It's not one thing. It's millions of different things that are united by analogy into something that we refer to as one thing.

JAD: We should say we looked into it and there are actually two pictures of Chopin, but he's kind of scowling in both. Or you can't really tell in the second one, it's too disintegrated. But no smiles.

[VIESTA TRAORE: (Old MacDonald Had A Farm sung in Bambara)]

 

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