Three into One: Twentieth-Century Scottish Verse in Translation Anthologies

Abstract

The anthology on which Iain Galbraith is presently at work will be the first retrospective overview of twentieth-century Scottish poetry to appear in translation. Over the last twenty-five years, however, eleven translation anthologies have been published featuring selections of contemporary Scottish verse or of Scottish poetry across the ages (these are listed in my Appendix). To what extent, then, have these met Iain Galbraith's demand that a translation anthology reflect not only the trilingualism of Scottish literature but the poly vocal, synthetic character of twentieth-century verse in all three of Scotland's languages? A study of the translation strategies employed suggests that editors and translators have largely failed to engage with the linguistic complexity of Scottish verse, and highlights ideological and institutional factors that militate against the recognition and translation of heteroglossia. Only a minority of these eleven anthologies (the first translation anthologies of Scottish verse since the mid-nineteenth century) represent Scottish literature as a multilingual tradition. Only four feature translations from English, Scots, and Gaelic alike (those listed in the Appendix for 1979, IO*82, 1992, and 1998). One, an Israeli volume of 1988, includes both English and Scots verse. Two apiece limit their selections to verse in English (1992 and 1998), in Scots (1976 and 1997), and in Gaelic (1986 and 1993). Only two of the monolingual anthologists assert that the language represented constitutes the authentic tradition of Scottish verse. For the editors of La nuova poesia scozzese, 1997, Scots is the only language in which Scottish poets can express their deepest emotions (p. 9). Those of Six poetes ecossaisy 1991, argue, conversely, that the media-driven spread of English has not only irretrievably distanced Scots from everyday discourse, rendering it an essentially artificial medium, but has thwarted hopes for a revival of the Gaelic tradition (p. 7). Other anthologists acknowledge the co-existence of three linguistic traditions but justify a