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TRANSLATORS NOTES Cirilo F. Bautista is one of the countrys most prominent poets in English.

As a poet, he believes that a poems power lies not in its meaning but in its manner of meaning (Bautista 39). A poem then is written in the how the concept is articulated via the images, metaphors and literary devices used. In his free verse poem, A Bit of A Job, it narrates a man who has a simple breakfast scene with his wife and child, but at going out to go to work, he is actually thinking of those he will kill the next day. I chose this particular poem as I was struck with the poems imagery, yet the images are framed in such a casual, even mundane setting of eating a family meal. It is actually a manifestation of CFBs stand that poems are written about the most ordinary things that happen in the most ordinary way as seen in an extraordinary manner (Mercado 65). Nothing could be more ordinary than having breakfast with the family and rushing off to work. Yet looking at the poem, I think it is not actually the breakfast scene that is the ordinary, but rather the prospect of having to kill someone for a living. Looking at the title even, the phrase a bit has the connotation of downplaying such a heinous act like killing. The persona also downplays his job At home, the assassin does not talk/about death. It is never really mentioned whether or not the family knows about his occupation, but it can be said that the assassin does not really hide his job, he just does not talk about it. The casualness of (perhaps) knowing that their provider is a hired killer heightens the sense of ordinariness of his job. In this case then, I focused my translation in the poems juxtaposition of the image of the ordinary with the distinctiveness of killing people for hire and took the risk of translating the poem into a fictional story. Quite a number of writers and/or critics actually see this kind of translating poetry as a useless or pointless endeavour, or even inferior to proper translation. Valery puts it quite succinctly (and very painfully, for that matter) that to translate poetry or verse into prose is like placing poetry into its coffin (116). This was something that made me hesitate in doing this task at first. And although Bonnefoy said that one cannot translate a poem (due to the form and style), it is actually untranslatable if the poem does not actually compel the reader (Parfan and Medina). With this particular argument, I then decided that I would derive part of my experience of translation of the poem from this standpoint.

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I first translated the title of the poem and had it changed for the story version. As mentioned earlier, the phrase a bit carries the casual tone of the killing job. I used the title Some Work to be Done in my story to carry that casualness further. The poem for me with the title A Bit of A Job looks to give a preview of what the assassin will do for the next day, or it a sort of setting or world-ing for the assassin. The casualness continues in the actual work the assassin has as he kills his target; he acts as though it is the proverbial another day in the office. He does it coolly and professionally, with some idle observations to the people around him to while the time away. The title is also a play of downplaying the seriousness of such heavy (and deadly) work, just as anyone would want to downplay the load of a certain task in order to make it seem easier to do. The poem then has an offhand tone of presenting the assassin persona, but there is a certain weight about that nonchalance that makes the poem (for me) possible to have it turned into a story. The poem definitely has a clear narrative and the scenes in it are simple and actually have some look of domestic bliss, even as it is confined in poetic devices and brevity. It is this that compels me, as Bonnefoy would say, that I would affirm that the poem can be translated into a story. And as this is turned into a story, I definitely sacrificed the poems form and content, focusing more on the sense the poem is giving me. The next question I tried to answer is to really how make my translation of the poem. Should I follow its original narrative? Should I make a sort of pre-/sequel to the poem? I attempted to adapt the simplicity of the breakfast scene and the seeming ordinariness of the perception of killing into how the assassin now actually kills his target. I chose to do a sequel as my translation as to give some sort of continuity to what the poem is presenting. The poems story of a casual day in the life of an assassin seems to push me in the direction of also presenting how he would casually kill his target on the day itself. The poem is very visual, in that the scenes in the poem are distinctly defined such as in the lines He butters his toast (line 2), two bites and a forkful of omelette/dipped in catsup. He gulps his hot coffee (lines 4 and 5) with similar visual actions in my story such as: He was whistling tunelessly as he walked along the main highway, He grinned when he saw one umbrella looking like a yellow rat, or Even as the crowd began to chant the inspirational speakers name, he screwed the cylinder

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onto the guns barrel. Thus I tried to translate the poem with similar visual scenes that present the mundane-ness, yet have an impending sinister quality, of the actions. Rabassa also mentions that for him, translation is a manner of adaptation or a way to make what has been translated (in his case the metaphor) fit into the original (2-3). For this it is important for him to have the spirit of the original metaphor contained also in the translation. I also derive my experience in translating the poem within Rabassas view on translation. The metaphor of the casual tone in the poem is an irony to the severity of the assassins apparent eagerness to do his job well. I was also intrigued with the third line of the fourth stanza, at nine in the morning. It will be for real. For an assassin, it may be a daring move to kill someone at so early in the day (not that I'm any expert of being an assassin, nor am I saying that CFB actually knows the little nuances on how to assassinate), perhaps with people still moving around in the streets and the light of day makes it clear for people to see more. So for me, it was more of a manipulation of that particular line on how that possibility can happen in my story the time is my metaphor of sorts to give it a more physical sense of being. I tried to make it more palpable, this physical-ness of the time, through giving it a reason why it had to be done at nine in the morning the time when the target will appear and for the assassin to have the chance to kill1. My ignorance of the actual meaning of the time mentioned in the poem makes it more meaningful for me and that meaningful-ness moves me to create something more concrete in my story, as CFB himself would take pleasure in owning a book using a language he barely understood (Bautista 33-34). In this regard, I am also deriving my translating process in Jakobsons look into intersemiotic theory. And though in the strictest definition of intersemiotic translation deals with transforming verbal signs into non-verbal signs (114), I am applying this particular theory in my work, as I am translating the signs the poem is giving me and transferring it into a fictional form. One part again is the transference of the phrase nine in the morning, where it was turned as a sign point or a signal for the assassin to kill his target in the story from the poems line.
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My inspiration for making the particular scene in my story was when I actually typed nine oclock in the morning on Google and the first hit was a book with that exact phrase as its title. The book is actually an autobiographical account of an Episcopalian leader, Dennis Bennett, announcing his experience of receiving the Holy Spirit. He is also considered as one of Americas influences in the charismatic movement. And although I did not name the assassins target in my story, I used that particular figure to serve as my assassins target. Perhaps using a charismatic religious leader will have its own semiotic implications as well.

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There is also transference of semiotics in how the assassin would actually be a good father and provider. In the poem, it shows the domestic bliss of having breakfast with the family. The family looks to be middle-class with the food identified such as omelette, catsup, toast and coffee. The image presents a bourgeois-ish angle, and may add irony to the mans unique job. Usually when one looks at killing-for-hire here in the Philippines, it is considered as a cutthroat job and that people who do this are usually at their most desperate, particularly for those who do not really earn much for the family. It is as though it is their last resort to stay alive, and the people who turn themselves into assassins become amoral and see it only as a job. But in the poem, it seems that the job pays well enough that the family could be seen to live well, and there is a sense of warmth among the family members. But why would the assassin have this particular job? The assassin is also seen to be excited about his job, with the lines: He sighs and admires the red roses./How good the world is! Thank God for people/asking to go before their time. The red roses clearly are a symbol of well-being and something wonderful, and the assassin equates his job with something positive. There is also an irony there when the assassin actually thanks God that there are opportunities for him to kill, when in fact God abhors killing (specifically His 6th commandment to the people of Israel)2. I attempted to recreate this sense at the last scene of the story, where another scene of domestic bliss is shown with the assassin now playing with his daughter and his wife listens on with bemusement. I also made the wife use a make-up brush as my translation of the metaphor of the assassins red roses, since being able to wear make-up makes a woman feel wonderful and good about herself. The assassin then enjoys doing his work, and is set in his belief that what he is doing is actually good and right, as seen in the line Thank God for people asking to go before their time. It is as though it is his duty and his privilege to do such work. Finally, my initial attempts to translate his poem may be a kind of manifestation of George Steiner and his hermeneutic approach to translation. He talked about having an initial investment of belief in that something from the source text that can be transferred and understood. This is what I felt when I first read CFBs poem even before having this translation project. Re-reading the poem again confirmed my belief that the sense this poem gave me can be transformed into a story form. The poems sense of the casual tone of a heinous act was an
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Which may be an irony in itself because there are stories shown in the Old Testament (and maybe throughout history as well) where there are people willing to kill for their G/god for one reason or another.

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interesting point to consider, and in translating this into a poem the sense from the poem became a little bit of more of a statement as the assassins target now became the inspirational speaker instead of being to those people asking to go before their time. Although the chance of having the inspirational speaker as the target can be seen as random, somehow the story may have been infused with my disdain of charismatic religious leaders. Steiners mention of the translators seizure and extraction of meaning may be based on what I have done with my choice of target. Although the poem may not have exactly mentioned what particular person the assassin would be killing, I enforced my sense of what the assassin would kill in this story it would be the charismatic leader. A bit of a personal angle had seeped into the translation, and in so doing may have given the story a bit of a somewhat political flavour at least political in my mind. Enjoy reading!

Works Cited: n.a. Unit 411-15: Literary Translation. Anukriti.net. Web. 9 Aug. 2011. <http://www.anukriti.net/pgdts/course411/ch15g.html>. Bautista, Cirilo F. Beholding the Nothing; or, The Art of Vanishment. Reading Cirilo F. Bautista. --. The Poem as Sign of Signs. Reading Cirilo F. Bautista. Bayot, David Jonathan. Breaking the Sign: An Interview with Cirilo F. Bautista. Reading Cirilo F. Bautista. Jakobson, Roman. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. The Translation Studies Reader. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000. Web. Kangarloo, Mohammad Reza Asadi. Sense Transferring Through Poetry Translation. TranslationDirectory.com. 2011. Web. 9 Aug. 2011. < http://www.translationdirectory.com/article493.htm>. Mercado, Monina A. I Celebrate Ordinary Experience: An Interview with Cirilo F. Bautista. Reading Cirilo F. Bautista. Valry, Paul. Variations on the Eclogues. Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. Web. Bantayan, Maria Anna N. 10981411

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Parfan, Ned, and T-Jay Medina. Yves Bonnefoy Translating Poetry. De La Salle University. 23 July 2011. Lecture. Rabassa, Gregory. No Two Snowflakes are Alike: Translation as Metaphor. The Craft of Translation. Eds. John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989. 1-12. Print.

A Bit of A Job 3 At home, the assassin does not talk about death. He butters his toast like any husband who must rush to the office two bites and a forkful of omelette dipped in catsup. He gulps his hot coffee and burns his throat, but it feels good and he wipes away his tears with a smile. Goodbye, wife, goodbye daughter, see you later. He catches a bus to the park, sits on a bench under the sun, and watches the promenaders. He looks at someone in particular, marks a spot below his nape, and squeezes the imaginary gun. Tomorrow, at nine in the morning, it will be for real. The money will be deposited in his account. Nothing will go wrong. He sighs and admires the red roses. How good the world is! Thank God for people asking to go before their time.

Bautista, Cirilo F. Believe and Betray: New and Collected Poems. Manila: DLSU Press, 2006. Print.

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Some Work to be Done It was quite hot outside. He was whistling tunelessly as he walked along the main highway. Later, hell need to go to the hardware store to buy some wire and a new bolt cutter. His wife also asked if he could buy some groceries today; they were running a bit low in some: ham, chicken, bananas. There was also milk somewhere in that list she gave, he thought. He shrugged his shoulders and continued to walk there was still time to do the shopping later. He also planned to buy a new toy for his daughter. The other day, she showed him a drawing that had a star in it. A star her teacher drew on the activity sheet for the lovely work she made a simple drawing of him and her playing in the park while the mother looked on smiling and sitting on a picnic blanket. He smiled at the memory; he was quite proud of her, his lovely baby. The toy will surely be a treat. The sun, even as it just rose up, was already bearing down its heat to the people bustling about. He did not mind it too much; at least it was another thing he can idly think about from time to time. Although, there were a lot of people walking just like him toting open umbrellas to ward off the suns rays. He grinned when he saw one umbrella looking like a yellow rat, complete with a cartoony face, black wire whiskers, flaps of cloth on top for ears and the ribbon to tie it closed like a tail. Perfect. It was still not time yet, but he noticed that people were slowly increasing in number. He would see several jeeps without signs on their windows parking along the sides of the main road, there was even a bus or two loaded with people. People in simple shirts and jeans, some were wearing shorts. Most were wearing slippers or shoes almost in tatters. Despite the heat, there was a palpable excitement in the air. He could hear tense murmurs and there was a defiant shout or two from the crowd, followed by chanting, then murmurs again. It was like an unscheduled El Shaddai meeting, with all the people coming together. But this day definitely has a particular schedule.

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It was easy to mingle within the crowd: he just wore the same type of clothes as they. His skin was a little darker, thanks to jogging almost every day in the morning. There was also a bronzer lotion tucked in his bag just in case he needed it. The crowd was getting bigger. Everyone was going to the grandstand area, where posters showed a tall man with a pearly-white smile. The man wore a sharp-looking suit, his hand on his chest. A short slogan saying Change Your Life! was written below the image. It brought a smile to his lips when he saw them. The main road was packed with people wanting to see this particular person. News going around was that he was a famous inspirational speaker, with several books and videos to his name. The country seemed to need anything inspirational, anything that could lift the peoples spirits up, especially the masses. Unemployment rates were at their lowest, crime was at an allhigh there had even been quite a number of bank robberies lately. The government was at a loss on how exactly to fix the issues that kept on piling up and the politicians were still playing the not-in-my-backyard-but-in-yours game. The visit of this inspirational speaker would be a godsend, they kept saying. The main road was also nearly empty, as it was to be used for a welcome parade for the inspirational speaker. The crowd was steadily swelling up, but they only stayed along the sides, strangely standing into the actual road, despite the excited looks and murmurs. He saw several trees lined up along the main road. They were tall, with thick trunks, lots of foliage and sturdy branches. He looked at one of them, one of the taller ones then back at the main road. He let the peoples movements push him towards the tree, then as he reached it he climbed up, as though wanting to get a better vantage point to see the parade. He kept climbing up and made sure he was standing on a sturdy branch. No one seemed to notice him. No one seemed to care to notice him. There was a buzz in the air, starting from the far end of the main road from where he was. The noise grew, the excitement increased, and then like a sudden gush of water, the crowd was already screaming, jumping, laughing and crying all at once. The inspirational speaker was coming.

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Amidst the noise, he got ready. He reached behind and under his shirt. He took out a black gun and from his pocket a black cylinder. Even as the crowd began to chant the inspirational speakers name, he screwed the cylinder onto the guns barrel. He could already see several police motorcycle escorts pass by. He had to shake his head when he saw it; he knew it was all just for show. He was back in an empty field where he was first practicing, the first time he held the specialized gun in his hand. It took him days of ranging his shots from point-blank range to several yards distance and until he could take out even a moving target, thanks to a remotecontrolled toy car and a life-sized cardboard cut-out. And it was the same now. He saw the float slowly going down the road, on top of it was the inspirational speaker. The man looked like he jumped out from the posters scattered all over. His perfect smile seemed dazzling. It was nine oclock in the morning. The inspirational speaker whipped his head back, and a gush of red suddenly appeared at the back of his neck. The people around him on the float realized too late that he was dead the moment the slumped to the float floor. The crowd had cries of joy and excitement earlier, but now they cried in panic and shock. They never noticed a man who was with them, a man who wore a faded shirt and faded jeans just like what they wore, a man who was shouting and crying along with them. They never realized that in a corner of a nearby building along the main road, the man disappeared. Later, in the afternoon, while his daughter was playing tea time with the new toy she just received and with him lounging on the sofa, his phone vibrated. He picked it up, his eyes only glancing to the news being blared on TV: a famous inspirational speaker visiting the country that morning had just been shot, and rumours of underhanded money laundering scandals had surfaced hours after the mans death. Reading his text message, only four words greeted him: Good job. Cash in.

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He then stood up and with a playful growl, scooped up his daughter and tickled her. In the master bedroom, the wife smiled as she heard laughter: one high-pitched, the other a rich baritone. She then added pink blush to her cheeks with a soft brush.

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