W. B. YEATS
A Prayer for Old Age (1935)

Two Years Later (1914)

© TRANSLATION CAFÉ
ISSN 1842-9149

Translation Café started in the year 2007, as the magazine of the MA Programme for the Translation of the Contemporary Literary Text (MTTLC), at the University of Bucharest.

The eZINE consists of a large number of parallel translations of the same text. The translations are made by graduate students of MTTLC, as a prolongation of their activity in class. They are meant to give the graduates a taste of their future profession, and also to increase their sense of responsibility for a translation they sign under their own name. No translation is checked by the teachers. The translators read other versions, and compare them among themselves. The result often goes into a volume published by Contemporary Literature Press, http://editura.mttlc.ro/. The magazine is posted on the internet the 18th of every month.

The texts are translated from or into English, and belong to all literary genres – fiction, poetry, literary criticism, as well as the drama, the essay. The focus is on Modern Literature, broadly meaning the 20th and the 21st centuries: Romanian, British, American among others.


W. B. YEATS
A Prayer for Old Age


God guard me from the thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I pray - for fashion's word is out
And prayer comes round again
That I may seem though I die old,
A foolish passionate man.

 

The translators are the following:

 

Andrei Alecsa
Anca Anghelescu
Oana Badea
Mădălina Borcău
Denisse Bucur
Mădălina Bucur
Roxana Budulan
Florentina Căpraru
Corina Cataragiu
Alexandra Coman

Delia Martin
Alexandru Matei
Adriana Minculescu
Gabriela Moateru
Georgiana Moşescu
Mădălina Nazâlu
Diana Olteanu
Maria Pantelimon
Larisa Pătraşcu
Oana Silişte

Ioana Constantinescu
Silvia Cora
Alexandra Cristea
Izabella Feher
Iulia Florescu
Simona Gavrilă
Teodora Gheorghe
Iulia Grosu
Loredana Malic
Cristina Maricescu

Mihaela Sora
Manuela Stancu
Mădălina State
Diana Talaban
Diana Toma
Tiberiu Vancsa
Florentina Vieriu
Anca Voicu

 

W. B. YEATS
Two Years Later


Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned?
I could have warned you; but you are young
So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever's offered
And dream that all the world's a friend,
Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.

 

The translators are the following:

 

Andrei Alecsa
Anca Anghelescu
Oana Badea
Mădălina Borcău
Denisse Bucur
Mădălina Bucur
Roxana Budulan
Florentina Căpraru
Corina Cataragiu
Alexandra Coman

Delia Martin
Alexandru Matei
Adriana Minculescu
Gabriela Moateru
Georgiana Moşescu
Mădălina Nazâlu
Diana Olteanu
Maria Pantelimon
Larisa Pătraşcu
Oana Silişte

Ioana Constantinescu
Silvia Cora
Alexandra Cristea
Izabella Feher
Iulia Florescu
Simona Gavrilă
Teodora Gheorghe
Iulia Grosu
Loredana Malic
Cristina Maricescu

Mihaela Sora
Manuela Stancu
Mădălina State
Diana Talaban
Diana Toma
Tiberiu Vancsa
Florentina Vieriu
Anca Voicu

 

 

Young Writer in Residence: Anca Iancu