Sixth Form Pupil Ed Wins 2nd Prize for Latin Poetry Translation
Many congratulations to our Sixth Form pupil Edward Chan, who came 2nd in the U18 category, for his translation from Latin of Poem 39 by Catullus in the Stephen Spender prize for translation in poetry, in association with The Guardian newspaper.
Sir Stephen Harold Spender (1909–1995), an English poet, translator, literary critic and editor, was born in London and educated at the University of Oxford. Stephen Spender owed his own early recognition and publication as a poet to T. S. Eliot. In turn he was always a generous champion of young talent, from his raising a fund for the struggling 19-year-old Dylan Thomas, to a lifelong commitment to helping promote the publication of newcomers.
The Stephen Spender Trust was established in 1997 to honour Stephen Spender’s achievements as poet and translator of poetry, and as champion of the rights of creative artists and writers to free expression. Inspired by Stephen Spender's literary interests and achievements, the Stephen Spender Trust aims to widen appreciation of the literary legacy of Stephen Spender and his contemporaries and to promote literary translation.
Edward's translation of the poem and accompanying commentary is given below.
Translation commentary
Catullus is best known for his saucier poetry, but he writes on other topics in an equally engaging manner. His passionate disposition always makes for an entertaining read, and I feel that his more colloquial and even complaining tone can help to humanise him and bridge the gap in time, where other ancient authors can come across as very static and serious. The character of Egnatius as the vain narcissist is almost universally recognisable, and I feel that this facilitates a particularly wide sympathy for Catullus' comments within this poem.
I began with a literal translation, and then worked through the poem looking for better renderings in English, where the structure of the Latin did not map well onto English. Having considered a couple of other translations (Loeb edition and Whigham 1966), I did my best to produce a version distinct from both, choosing synonyms that, if slightly less literal, were perhaps better representative of the tone of the poem. The original work was written in a regular metre that would have been difficult to reproduce in translation. Instead, I elected to use decasyllabic lines in order to impose a structure on my rendering without having to disrupt the meaning of the original excessively in forcing the English into a metre more suited to Latin.
On a specific stylistic note, Latin poets make frequent use of harsh consonantal sounds such as 'c' or 't' to denote disgust; for example, 'minxit' (urinates). I chose to use the words 'rictus' and 'micturate' as synonyms for 'smile' and 'urine' in order to mirror the effect from the Latin.
Edward Chan
