one of the most interesting things ive read on translation is frederick turner's intro to his & zsuzsanna ozsvaths translations of miklos radnoti in 'foamy sky'. "...there is also the faith; for after all, the cadence of poetry is already prior to and in common among all languages." " ...if the translator has faith in the ur-language -- one might almost say, if he does not once look behind to check whether the 'literal' sense is following -- he may yet lead the redeemed meaning up into the light. In other words, since English is descended from the same deep root as Magyar, any music of which Magyar is capable exists also in English. To recover it is like, as Michelangelo put it, cutting away the stone to reveal the statue .."

turner is going past the idea of translating language as such - or as words - but reaching to the pulse - the reaching empowered by the poet - that generated the poem originally. he is concerned with metrics: "one must be prepared to ... sacrifice everything to the meter" - what u might call a rightwing radical. would such an approach be going too far with songs in ngarla?

geytenbeek states that he taught brown to read and write english. this language teaching - to differing extents - must be common to collaborative translation work.