There Were No Seagulls

It’s been said the longest journey begins with one step, and one of the steps I took during the coronavirus pandemic was to explore my ethnic and cultural heritage. I knew that my grandparents on my mother’s side emigrated from Lithuania and settled in Chicago. I knew that I had been born at Saint Bernard Hospital on West 64th Street. But I knew little more about my roots. To explore my heritage, it seemed natural to do so through one of the things I love best: poetry.

I’m not a native speaker of the language. In fact, I’m nowhere close to fluent. But I bought one, then two, then three Lithuanian-English dictionaries. Equipped with these resources, I embarked on a journey of word-for-word translation of contemporary Lithuanian poems. Word for word translation seemed to me the ultimate way to achieve close reading of a poem and, later, I would find it a way to achieve close reading of a culture.

As part of this journey, I am trying to improve my spoken language skills. I took a series of online classes offered by the Balzekas Museum of Chicago, and the classes did improve my understanding of grammar. I also learned words and phrases a tourist might use in asking directions or asking for food and drink. If those classes weren’t as satisfying as I would have liked, it’s because there are limited applications for food and drink, and directions to train stations, in poetry. But the classes did help me to start to attune to Lithuanian culture.

To assess my translation skills, I started with a book featuring Lithuanian poems presented side-by-side with English translations. Taking several poems, without peeking at the English versions. I tried my hand at translating from the Lithuanian. I then compared my results with those of the experienced translators. My translations came close to the ones published in the book but lacked complete grammatical comprehension. My library continued to grow as I added a text on Lithuanian grammar. After additional independent study, I felt ready to take on my own translations of previously untranslated work.

Looking back, I realize I’m a slow, deliberate, translator. Of course, like every other translator, I have my life’s duties to perform, and my own poetry to write. So far, in three years’ time, I have fully translated and placed in North American literary journals ten poems by three different contemporary Lithuanian poets. Other poems have been started but abandoned for various reasons. That said, with each project, my understanding of Lithuanian grammar has improved along with my understanding of the slang and mythology of the culture which helped shape the poems. The work of the poet I most recently translated, Alina Borzenkaitė, proved the most challenging from a cultural perspective. Borzenkaitė studied history and heritage science at Vilnius University and currently works in a field called heritage protection. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that her poems contain references to Lithuania’s cultural history.

The reason I’ve chosen to translate contemporary Lithuanian poets, as opposed to the poets of prior generations? Because I’m interested in our world in crisis, specifically, crises of ecology and armed conflict. Today’s ecological threats, including climate change, are global and unite our separate cultures. Nuclear weapons also draw our cultures closer as there is no part of the globe beyond their reach. But my interest in Lithuanian culture was primarily sparked by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. Lithuania shares with Ukraine a long history of occupation, in the case of Lithuania by Russia’s predecessor nation the U.S.S.R.

Not being fluent in the language, how did I find contemporary poetry to translate? In searching the internet, I found the Lithuanian cultural journal Šiaurės Atėnai. When I saw the tab marked “Literatūra,” I was excited to find under that tab one for “Poezija.” The very first time I accessed the website for a Šiaurės Atėnai, scrolling through a series of  poems byAlma Riebždaitė, I saw the phrase “atominė bomba” (atom bombs) and immediately knew I wanted to translate these poems. This is the journal where I later found the poems of Patricija Gudeikaitė and by Alina Borzenkaitė.

The poems of all three poets will stand the test of time but were of special interest to me because they powerfully convey the state of affairs in the Baltic region today. These works seem to fit the description of contemporary Lithuanian poet and translator Rimas Uzgiris. In the introduction to How the Earth Carries Us: New Lithuanian Poets, Uzgiris offers: “Lithuanian poetry in the twenty-first century impresses with its diversity of styles, subjects and forms. The younger generation—those born after 1970 or so, has been especially marked by experimentation, diaspora and the rejection of old themes.” Borzenkaitė’s poems, which feature compound words and themes which challenge the ecological status quo, of treating the environment as a resource rather than an ecosystem, seem an example of a newer approach by a new generation of poets.

Of course, as well as challenging the status quo, it’s important for a writer to know their nation’s past. Culture is not born fully formed in the present moment but has developed over several generations. A knowledge of culture, in many cases, is essential to a successful translation. By successful, I mean a translation that conveys the original intent, which is in some cases hidden between the lines. This is one of the potential pitfalls of relying on translation applications, or “apps,” whether Google translate, or DeepL, or others. A pitfall is not the same as a rabbit hole. These apps, in most cases, can get one close to the meaning on the page, but in some cases offer results that stray from the poet’s original intent.

I’m not alone in thinking this way. In their introduction to the text they edited, The Craft of Translation, John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte offered: “[Words] initiate the reading and interpretive process that ultimately leads to the act of translation. Translators, in their act of reading, interact in a particular way with words. They reexamine words with respect to their semantic and cultural functions.” If words must be reexamined, then of course translation apps as well people have a role to play. If there’s a large enough database of language usage, the app may come closest to true meaning. But in the case of Lithuanian, there is certainly not a large enough database of poetry in translation for apps to scan. It makes sense to question whether translation apps are geared, at all, toward poetry or are best used to request specific foods in restaurants, or directions to train stations.

An additional benefit of translating the work of one’s contemporaries is that, if one is able to develop a rapport with the poet whom they are translating, the translator has the opportunity to ask the poet questions. This was helpful in translating the work of Riebždaitė, and of Gudeikaitė, but nothing short of essential in translating the work of Borzenkaitė. I can’t imagine coming across work of a similar degree of cultural complexity and successfully translating the poem without being able to consult the author.   

Despite the fact that I am not a native Lithuanian speaker and the three poets I translated are not native English speakers, I was able to communicate with each of the poets. We corresponded through social media and email, with the use of the aforementioned translation apps (they are better at translating simple dialogue than complex poetry). A certain amount of back-and-forth was necessary depending on the cultural complexity of the line of poetry being discussed.

My correspondence with Borzenkaitė not only taught me the importance of cultural interpretation but also taught me to be especially wary of translation apps. To be clear, I myself have used translation apps in performing my translations, but only to provide context when the phrasing is especially complex grammatically. With each of the poems translated, I have begun with word-for-word translation. In doing so I have relied on my three separate print Lithuanian-English dictionaries, supplemented by the recently acquired book on Lithuanian grammar, further supplemented by online English-Lithuanian dictionaries (which sometimes are able to provide modern usages of words, and detailed examples of those usages, not present in the more dated print dictionaries).

Borzenkaitė taught me: sometimes there are no seagulls (even if the text seems to mention seagulls). More about that shortly. First, I’d like to share some of the other details I needed to resolve in translating the three poems by Borzenkaitė: “Upės vamzdynuose” (Rivers in pipes); “Jonpaparčiai” (Ostrich ferns); and “Laumės ratas” (Witches’ lifecycle).

As I mentioned, it was necessary to take into account Borzenkaitė’s profession in the field of cultural heritage to accurately translate these poems. They are imbued with references to Lithuanian culture, including references to the nation’s pagan roots. Further, Borzenkaitė uses compound words and unusual words such as “fond,” which is an archival term referring to the stored records of an organization. In the poem “Upės vamzdynuose” (Rivers in Pipes), Borzenkaitė uses this word to excellent effect to create a metaphor for rivers which, once placed in pipes, can no longer be seen and are therefore treated as stored records.

A different linguistic challenge occurred when translating the poem “Jonpaparčiai” (Ostrich ferns). One translation app interpreted the Lithuanian Jonpaparčiai as St. John’s Wort, a result fatal to understanding the poem’s central narrative. Jonpaparčiai is, actually, the Lithuanian botanical name for Matteuccia struthiopteris, a plant known as Ostrich Fern in the United States. The Ostrich Fern is a plant with unique magical properties in Lithuanian culture. Ferns do not flower, they reproduce through spores, and yet in the poem the ferns flower because, in Lithuanian mythology, they do just that on Midsummer’s Eve. In the poem, the ferns are caused to flower by žaltvykslės, or “little spirits” (the diminutive form is used in Lithuanian) of žaltvykslės. The Lithuanian source word refers to a viper but can also refer to the ghostly marsh light which is called in English “will-o’-the-wisp.”

The final poem in the group of three by Borzenkaitė which I translated presented a challenge right away, in the title: “Laumės ratas” (Witches’ lifecycle). The idea of “laumė” in Lithuanian culture comes close to, yet is more complicated than, the North American concept of “witch.” And yet there wasn’t  a more precise word available in the English language. “Laumė” in Lithuanian culture refers to a woodland spirit, a cross between what we could call in North America a witch and a fairy. The witch seemed the better choice in translation than the fairy because the latter in North American culture is more or less limited to the child’s world of fantasy.

In communicating with the poet, I learned that the stanzas of the poem “Laumės ratas” represent snapshots, through the centuries, in the lifecycle of the laumė. The poem is about the impact of one or more witches (one if you believe, as some Lithuanians do, that witches can be reborn) on humans and the environment throughout their lifetime (or possibly many lifetimes). Because of the complexity of this idea, the title “Witches’ lifecycle” seemed more appropriate in English than the translation options, offered by apps, of “Fairy circle,” or “Witches wheel.”

But perhaps the most interesting cultural pitfall I almost fell into I avoided through a chance exchange with the poet. I presented my penultimate draft of the poem “Witches’ lifecycle” for Borzenkaitė to review with the help of their English-speaking friend. One of the more scenic stanzas in the poem (translated into English) seemed clearly to read: “On the frozen Baltic Sea / the seagulls built their homes. / Among glasswort, / their newborn greeted the day.”

But Borzenkaitė replied: “there were no seagulls.” She went on to explain that the stanza referred to the arrival of Normans in Lithuania in the eleventh century, who were nicknamed “seagulls” by the people already living there. My draft translation also failed to divine the witch’s presence among the nonexistent seagulls. The witch must appear in each of the stanzas, in some cases directly present and, in others, appearing as subtext. This stanza clearly called for subtext as the witch existed not only among the native Lithuanian population but also among the Normans, who came and went, much like seagulls do.

Of course there were, in the 11th Century, and still are, seagulls on the Baltic coast. In fact, there is a gull known as the Lesser Black-backed, or Baltic Gull. This gull is said to breed throughout Northern Europe but is most common in the Stockholm archipelago to Botnian Bay and in the central Baltic Sea around Gotland. Like the Normans mentioned in the poem, the Baltic Gull is also said to spend much of its time far out to sea, flying well over 100 km daily in their search for food. The final lines of the stanza of the poem in question, in my translation, read: The Normans flocked to / frozen Baltic shores. / Among glasswort, / the newborn greeted the day.

Even the final translation of the stanza represents a compromise. I chose the word “flocked” to suggest the idea of seagulls. I chose the ambiguous “the newborn” without specifying the newborn of the Normans, the seagulls, or the witches, because in my mind they commingle on Baltic shores. So even though the word “seagulls” doesn’t appear in the final translation, the seagulls are there in the background, it’s just that they do not displace the Normans. Now the phrase “there were no seagulls” sticks with me as a somewhat humorous note-to-self to pay careful attention to cultural context when translating a poem.