PULP celebrates winners of ‘Grinch’ translation contest

The scattered conversations in Spanish and French faded as students ate Chinese take-out and listened to a translation of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” in Twi, a language spoken in Ghana.

The language-themed feast was part of the awards ceremony for the PU Language Program (PULP)’s inaugural translation contest, held in early October. Student contestants were asked to translate the opening lines of the Dr. Seuss poem from English into the language of their choice.

“I translated [Grinch] as lugiu, which literally sort of means the green goblin,” said Jonathan Kent ’10, honorable mention winner for his Chinese translation in Tang poetry form. “It was an interesting and fun activity.”

PULP’s main focus is translating documents for nonprofit organizations around the world, but it decided to host this contest to showcase the creative aspects of literary translations. PULP also hopes to increase interest in the organization, PULP president Keisuke Ishihara ’10 said.

Judges followed guidelines that emphasized grammatical correctness, fidelity to the original poem, creativity and reflection of the spirit of Dr. Seuss.

“It’s really good because it’s something different from what we usually do,” Ishihara said. “So I hope it becomes a tradition.”

PULP received more than 60 entries in 31 languages, including Danish, Sesotho, Nepali and Pig Latin. The winning submissions were displayed on a poster in Frist Campus Center. Every participant received small prizes.

“The turnout was definitely good. Since it was our first time doing this, we weren’t sure what the response would be,” said Jun Xiang ’10, PULP vice president and contest organizer. “We’re pretty happy. In each of the major languages, we got at least three [entries], and we’re also very happy with the breadth of languages, the variety.”

Faculty members from various departments served as judges, and PULP was able to find faculty judges “for all but five or six of the languages,” Xiang said.

“I think it’s always difficult to put in words the special meaning or underlying tone or message,” said Adriana Popescu, head of the engineering library and the judge for the five Romanian entries. “It’s hard to do it when you’re translating word by word. You have to read between the lines, and I think you really have to understand the message that comes in the original language before you translate it.”

Participants said that they faced a number of challenges in the contest, including capturing Dr. Seuss’ literary inventiveness.

“It’s not about just translating the words or even the meaning. It’s about translating the characteristics of the poem, metric and rhymes,” said Juan Miguel Ogarrio ’11, winner for the Spanish translation, noting that he changed the socks in the poem to underwear to keep the rhyme pattern. “You wonder if such a small detail will be brought to question or if you have the authority to do so.”

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Some students, like Faaez Ul Haq ’11, submitted translations in multiple languages. Haq translated the poem excerpt into Urdu, Punjabi, Norwegian and Arabic, researching the Grinch and reading the complete poem to better understand the social significance of the character. He felt that the translation into Urdu, though it was his native language, was the most challenging.

“Poetry isn’t an easy job in Urdu,” Haq said. “Even though it’s my native language, it was hard to translate. Or maybe because I know it well, the criteria [I gave myself were] different.”