The Linguist

domain of literary translation remained untouched by me. The war changed everything. 'You Stand with Your Little "No War" Sign' became famous in English. In addition to my own, I know of two other published translations of this important poem. 2 Its first two lines read: Стоїш із плакатиком 'no war' як індульгенцією за те, чого уже не відвернути: війну не зупинити The Ukrainian word індульгенція (indulhentsiia) 3 refers to a specific formal act, within the Roman Catholic Church, of granting absolution for sins. However, it has moved beyond its religious meaning to acquire a general sense of officially requested and granted forgiveness. It directly translates as 'indulgence', but in English 'indulgence' also has a much more common meaning – the act of indulging someone – which does not evoke a sense of doing the bare minimum to assuage one's guilty conscience. In my own translation, I worked through a number of variants before settling on: You stand with your little 'no war' sign like it's your atonement for what can't be reversed now: the war can't be stopped 'Atonement' conveys the original meaning without ambiguity; it is a weighty, evocative word with a single specific meaning. Later, I saw that the other translators had used 'indulgence' and 'indulging', and this makes sense. It is a faithful rendering of the original, presenting a word with a much more similar shape. Both translations are great, but I would not make a different choice with my own. One of the concepts that keeps appearing in Ukrainian war poetry is рідний/рідна/рідне (ridnyi/ridna/ridne), which indicates kinship, emotional closeness and proximity – one's own-ness which goes beyond blood ties. In a poem by Halyna Kyrpa, which I translated for Chytomo, the poet imagines a poplar tree crying underneath her window. In Ukrainian, which marks grammatical gender (masculine, feminine and neuter), the poplar tree (тополя; topolia) is female; she is the poet's sister in need of consolation during times of war: Рідна моя, сестро моя, тополенько срібна! Обіймаю її, а вона тремтить. Тремтить і плаче. Рідна моя (ridna moia) means 'female blood relative of mine', which is reinforced by 'sister mine' in the following line. The third line describes the poplar with a diminutive: тополенько (topolenko; 'little poplar'). Diminutives in Ukrainian indicate emotional closeness, and are frequently encountered in endearments addressed by women to children, or between women. The imagery of tree as sister, the word order of noun- adjective (rather than the usual adjective- noun) and the diminitivisation all stylistically evoke a folk lament, a traditional women's genre in Eastern European folklore. The older female poet writing from Kyiv makes deeply emotional use of this genre to convey her sorrow and bereavement. English does not have a concept similar to рідна (ridna), so I chose words which would elicit the feelings of emotional closeness: My dear heart, sister mine, my sweet silver poplar! I hug her, and she trembles, trembles crying. I added the word 'sweet' to help convey the sense of tenderness. Alliteration, likewise, helps create a more traditional, folkloric feel. I used alliteration again when translating Oleh Bohun's powerful modernist poem, which makes use of the word рідне (ridne; 'one's own/kin') and the frequently encountered antonym чуже (chuzhe; 'not one's own/not kin/other/alien') in the very first line: рідне тіло межі. щось чуже камлає потойбіч порожніючим серцем. beloved body of border. beyond it, an alien sorcery drums with a draining heart Since the juxtaposition of 'self' and 'other' presented by рідне/чуже (ridne/chuzhe) is not available in English, I had to try multiple variants. 'Own body of border' or 'one's own body of border' would perhaps be more accurate, but it felt clunky to me in English. The alliteration is not present in the original, but it created a contrast between one's beloved land (with its repeating 'b' sounds) and the threat to that land from the enemy 8 The Linguist Vol/61 No/3 2022 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK

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