For works translated by the original author, how common is it for additional translations to exist? What might these translation add?

Question

Sorley MacLean was a Scottish poet who worked in Gaelic. This was the language of his poem, Hallaig, about the Highland clearances and how time changes our perception of history. However, he also provided an English translation. Here are the opening stanzas.

Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig

The window is nailed and boarded
through which I saw the West
and my love is at the Burn of Hallaig,
a birch tree, and she has always been

between Inver and Milk Hollow,
here and there about Baile-chuirn:
she is a birch, a hazel,
a straight, slender young rowan.

In Screapadal of my people
where Norman and Big Hector were,
their daughters and their sons are a wood
going up beside the stream.

In 2002 famed poet Seamus Heaney offered a new translation. In parts, it is markedly different from the original although the broad meaning is preserved. Here is his version of the above text.

Time, the deer, is in Hallaig Wood

There's a board nailed across the window
I looked through to see the west
And my love is a birch forever
By Hallaig Stream, at her tryst

Between Inver and Milk Hollow,
somewhere around Baile-chuirn,
A flickering birch, a hazel,
A trim, straight sapling rowan.

In Screapadal, where my people
Hail from, the seed and breed
Of Hector Mor and Norman
By the banks of the stream are a wood

When I first read the translation, it struck me as almost rude: why would someone, even of Heaney's stature, feel they could do a better job of translating something than the original author?

On reflection, I am not aware of any other instances of a work translated by its original author being re-translated by other writers. Are there any? What additional insight might such re-translations offer?

Answer 1

One example is August Strindberg, who translated some of his works into French, and even wrote some original works directly in French. One of the works he translated is The Father, in his transaltion called Le Père, and in a more recent translation Père (at least if I interpret French Wikipedia correctly).

From what I understand from secondary sources, Strindberg's French was passable, but it was hardly of the quality that his translation was as readable as they would have been if someone more capable had done them.

Normal translations usually age, so that a work needs a new translation every fifty years or so, even if the original might only need small adjustments in spelling. Whether this is also true for self-translations is doubtful, but this might also be an issue.

Answer 2

Heaney, as you have suggested in your third paragraph, was a terrific translator, his finest translation being Beowulf of course.

The role of a translator is critical; translators must know more than the linguistic differences between the languages; they must be able to understand and convey the cultural similarities and differences between the source and the target languages. To do such translation requires more than technical language skills; it requires the ‘right’ awareness of the role of translation and translation issues as well.

In terms of the above passage, I think Heaney hits the right note when he translates it, the conveyance of the poem using a slight re-wording may annoy especially if the original author had not intended it this way but that is never Heany's focus. It is to tell the story from a new perspective.

To borrow his own words, Seamus Heaney, the man and his poetry, forever catches, 'the heart off guard, and blows it open'.