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Translation of the French poem ‘Coronavirus’ by Stephen Blanchard & how I went about translating it.
Coronavirus- Stephen Blanchard
My translation of the poem
Nous voilà confinés, face à l’épidémie, Le virus se répand, il faudra patienter, Nous n’avons plus le temps de tout argumenter, Les français sont touchés, c’est une pandémie.
Facing the epidemic, we are now confined We will have to be patient, the virus is spreading We no longer have the time to argue about anything This is a pandemic, the French are also quarantined
Chacun panique à bord, la porte refermée, La guerre est déclarée en absence de choix, L’amour est en danger quand l’horizon sans voix Nous prive de l’espoir d’une visite aimée.
The door closed shut, panic is mounting War is declared against our will; we are choiceless Love is endangered when the silent horizon, voiceless, Deprives us of hope, of a treasured outing
Je regarde la vie en perte de lien, À l’heure où vont s’enfuir les ailes de mes rêves, Le vide et l’abandon sont de mortelles sèves Me transperçant le cœur d’un doute kafkaïen. Mais l’homme tend ses bras vers la belle espérance, La solidarité sur un même chemin, Car le devoir l’appelle à se faire devin Pour sauver notre monde aux jardins de l’errance.
I watch life losing its connection At a time when the wings to my dreams will be crushed by annulment The deadly saps of emptiness and abandonment Pierce my heart with Kafkaesque dejection Yet, man extends his arms towards sweet aspiration Coupled with solidarity For duty implores him to think with clarity In order to save our itinerant nation
How I went about translating this poem ‘Coronavirus’ consists of four enclosed-rhyme quatrains, meaning that I had to alter my literal translation of the poem to preserve this form in English. This included switching the order of some clauses to ensure that the words at the end of each line rhymed with one another. For example, the first line of my final translation is ‘Facing the epidemic, we are now confined’, whereas my literal translation of ‘Nous voilà confines, face à l’épidémie’ was ‘Now we are confined, facing the epidemic’. In this case, I switched the clauses in order to include the rhyme of ‘confined’ and ‘quarantined’. The lines in which I found it most challenging to adhere to the ABBA rhyme scheme were the middle two of the second stanza. After much deliberation, I decided to translate the ends of these lines more literally and take advantage of the fact that ‘choix’ and ‘voix’ rhyme in both French and English. My favourite part of translating the poem was using my analytical skills to unlock its meaning. I found that understanding what Blanchard aimed to convey in French meant I could express the same in English more easily. For example, I interpreted the third, most melancholy stanza to be expressing Blanchard’s misery after all his plans for the future are cancelled due to Coronavirus. This lead me to include the words ‘annulled’ and ‘dejection’ in my translation even though these were not explicitly written in the poem. Overall, I thoroughly relished the challenge of translating this poem and particularly enjoyed reading its optimistic ending.
