15 / 22
15
The Art of Translation:
Language in
Bel Canto
Ann Patchett has said that learning about opera,
as she did
while writing
Bel Canto
, was like learning a second language. Both novel and
opera concern themselves with language and what is lost—and perhaps
gained—in translation.
In fact, creating the opera was itself an exercise in translation. It was
important to López and Cruz that each character sing in his or her own
language. Audiences will hear English, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, French,
German, Quechua, Latin, and Italian. The bilingual Cruz wrote in the
appropriate languages for the English- and Spanish-speaking characters,
and a team of translators converted the rest of the libretto into the other
languages sung in the opera. López says he also relied on translators
“whenever [I] didn’t understand the structure or thought process, the latter
being especially true for Quechua, which comes along with a different
perception of the world.”
Working with multiple languages provided logistical challenges. López cites
a duet between Roxane and Hosokawa for which Cruz had written short,
haiku-like lines:
ROXANE
Outside, the flight of a bird.
HOSOKAWA
Outside, a boy shouts…
ROXANE
…a woman runs…
HOSAKAWA
…a butterfly dies unseen…
López comments, “There’s a certain musical cadence to this exchange
that begs for a kind of contrapuntal question-answer treatment.” Once
Hosokawa’s words were translated into Japanese, however, the symmetry
was broken.
ROXANE
Outside, the flight of a bird.
HOSOKAWA
Sotono sekai de-wa, otokonoko ga sawaideiru.
ROXANE
…a woman runs…
HOSAKAWA
Chyou ga, hitoshirezu, shindeyuku.
López struggled to find a solution, finally determining that Hosokawa should
“sing each word as if reciting it, bringing a drone-like quality to it (especially
because he doubles the bass line every second measure) while Roxane
simply floats above him in an ever-ascending melodic line.”
There are many translators and acts of translating in
Bel Canto
. Hosokawa’s
personal translator Gen becomes essential as the hostages and rebels try to
navigate the Babel in which they find themselves. Of course, translation is
always inexact and the number of languages Gen knows is finite. Carmen
confronts him with his inability to understand her and the other young soldiers,
so different is their life experience, the languages they speak:
We have uniforms, not bodies.
We have names you wouldn’t know how to translate…
Carmen and the other young rebels are the disenfranchised of their society—
they are not seen, not heard, not understood. She asks Gen if he can teach
her words she doesn’t know. Facility in Spanish, in which Gen is fluent, may
help her get by in mainstream society, but on a deeper level, Carmen wants
to be someone who is regarded with respect, who is listened to as Gen is.
The Red Cross emissary Messner becomes a translator of sorts when he acts
as the go-between for the rebels and the Peruvian government.