Enheduanna Lost in Translation
Ongoing · Sound, installation
There is something sad about a language that is no longer spoken. Once people expressed themselves through it, every day in their everyday lives, and now both they and their words are gone.
Enheduanna, priestess and poet from around 2250 BCE, might be the earliest author known by name. She wrote in Sumerian, a language that is now extinct. There is something optimistic about trying to make sense of things you don’t understand, even when you don’t always get it right and when the message is distorted along the way. At the same time, projecting your own expectations onto something you don’t understand can be quite misleading and a way of exerting power, in this case over the interpretation of the past.
I asked people to read lines from Enheduanna’s best-known poem aloud and translate them by speech through Google Translate, using Basque or Korean in place of Sumerian, then to find something meaningful in the result and record it. Each of the excerpts is the same set of lines, arriving in a different language through a different person. These voices tell a very different story to hers.
Din kärlek är annorlunda. Var försiktig med orden i notatet. Jag har blinkat. Volymen är bra. Kanske finns det en grupp. Min älskling, min fjärilsmassage. Excerpt in Swedish
من شما را سایه نمی زنم و انجام می دهم من موعلی من شازو من العا دست سینه من موهام من گاباا بیتاب موم Excerpt in Persian
Mimi Sikopi kivuli na pia nakupah Mimi Usijali kuhusu mimi laana Sisi ni mara chache Simama na uhamishe lèngre ut – Haionekani kama maporomoko ya maji Excerpt in Swahili
Bang i mitt ansiktsbyte. Liten park parkerade Jesus. Jesus är transsexuell. Hallonbjörk. Banken laddar upp min forskning. Jag har ikonsex. Brun musik på torget. Språkskola. Den öde marknaden Excerpt in Swedish