Bryce Goulding
Winterfink
Die klein rooi vink,
so koen
tiep hy
uit die omswagteling
wat oogloos als
begrawe en omring,
hy ril,
en bol
sy rosse bef,
pof sy dons,
kwik sy stert,
rangskik die lanterns
van die linker- ,
en die regtervlerk,
poets
die goudvlek
op sy stuit,
rig
met ‘n verkwiekte blik
sy snuit
na botselknoppe
van die es,
vibreer
sy krop
tot warmrooi
sy keel
verblos –
en –
sneeuvry
laveer hy los
uit die bevrore
huls, rits
‘n vuurspoor
teen die lug,
voor hy verniks,
’n tint, ‘n klank
wat ons mekaar
vertel,
verswyg,
en hervertel
onder die tafellamp
as als weer wit
en swart
geword het
en verstil.
–Marlene van Niekerk
Bravery of the Winter Finch
The little red finch,
so brave
he wobbles
from the entrapment
that blindly
buries and envelops all,
he shivers,
inflates
his russet chest,
puffs his down,
flicks his tail,
adjusts the lanterns
of the left
and right wings,
polishes
the gold patch
on his tail,
turns
with a determined stare
his beak
toward budding knobs
of the ash tree
vibrates
his crop
until color
his throat
regains –
then –
snow-free
he flies free
from the freezing
husk, zigzags
a trail of light
across the sky
before vanishing,
a sight, a sound
that we together
tell,
keep hidden,
and narrate
under the table lamp
when all is back to white
and black
and reaches
silence.
–Translated from Afrikaans by Bryce Goulding
Winter Finch Wonder
The little red finch,
so bold
he bobs
out of the swaddle
that blindly
envelops and surrounds all,
he shakes,
and puffs out
his russet chest,
puffs up his down,
flicks his tail,
arranges the lanterns
of the left,
and right wings,
shines
the gold patch
on his tail,
turns
with a revitalized stare
his beak
toward budding knobs
of the ash tree
vibrates
his crop
until warm
his throat
flushes –
and –
snow-free
he soars free
out of the cold
husk, zigzags
a trail of fire
across the sky,
before he vanishes,
a moment, a sound
that we together
recount,
keep within,
and remember
under the table lamp
when all is back to white
and black
and returns to
reality.
–Translated from Afrikaans by Bryce Goulding
Translator’s Statement
Marlene van Niekerk, born in 1954, is an accomplished poet, critic, novelist, dramatist, and professor of writing in the Overberg region of South Africa, which is 160km away from Cape Town (and near my grandfather’s house!) (“Marlene van Niekerk, Author of Agaat”). She is best known for her novel “Triomf,” a book about a poor Afrikaans family post-Apartheid coming to terms with the changes to society, but also has written many books, poem collections, newspaper articles, and even some political satire (“Marlene van Niekerk, Author of Agaat”). She has won countless awards, the most notable of which being the Hertzog and Ingrid Jonker prizes (Wikipedia). She started her journey at primary school in Riviersonderend and then high school and university in Stellenbosch, where she studied languages and philosophy (Poetry International). Then, she went to the Netherlands and got a degree in Philosophy, studying for five years at the University of Amsterdam (Poetry International). After getting her degree, she taught philosophy at the University of South Africa, then Afrikaans and Dutch literature at the University of the Witwatersrand (Poetry International). Today, she is teaching creative writing at the University of Stellenbosch, going full circle, back to the college that raised her (“Marlene van Niekerk, Author of Agaat”). Her poetic style is very old-fashioned, using language similar to the equivalent of someone like Shakespeare in English for complexity. The old-fashioned language delivers deep and vibrant imagery that layers to form the emotion that fills the poem (Poetry International). The best way I could describe it would be to say that she uses verbs as a kind of adjective. With her style, the verbs sort of layer to form movement that makes the poem seem like a stop-motion video.
Van Niekerk wrote the poem I translated, “Wintervink” (pronounced vin-tur-fenk, translates to Winter Finch), in 2013 while still working at Stellenbosch University. The story is about a finch, which I assume is the Red-Billed Firefinch (Lagnostica senegala) because it often lives on mountains and in the few places there is snow in South Africa. In Winterfink, a little Red-Billed Firefinch fights his way out of a snowfall, dusting himself off and showcasing his bravery, before flying up into the sky and showing off his colors, delivering wonder to all those around him. The poem beautifully captures both of these emotions, wonder and bravery, in this poem, through her rich, detail-thick usage of Afrikaans.
The poem consists of 45 lines, each very short (2-6 syllables), to create that stop-motion effect. The lines sometimes end with a period, like the last one, but mostly are enjambed. It’s in free verse, but finds an interesting stop-and-start rhythm that groups lines in twos and threes; you can hear it in CJ Nel’s reading. There are three stanzas: the first is 28 lines long, telling the story of the bird recovering and preparing himself for flight, the second is one line, which literally says “and–” and chains together the two stanzas, and the final stanza is 16 lines, portraying the wonder the bird provides to the humans who are lucky enough to see it. In the first stanza, there is 1 instance of figurative language: snow was called “the entanglement that blinds and surrounds all,” trying to communicate the predatory nature of the snow on the little finch. I needed to try and retain both of these instances of figurative language in my translations, because they were very important to portraying the meaning of the poem. The final feature to note about this poem was an instance of repetition in the third and final stanza. Three words, “vertel,” “verswyg,” and then “vertel” again, lead up to the final line of the poem, “verstil,” meaning “still”. This repetition of that prefix, “ver-,” a verbalizing prefix used to change verbs to their transitive state, was another thing to consider as I did my translations. In summary, the poem is almost like a bedtime story that kids would love to listen to, because it radiates a wonderful message that we should never give up and instead show resilience. The message it portrays is along the line of “if you don’t give up, you will be able to fly high and show everyone your incredible colors.”
I started my translation process by thinking about people who I knew that could speak Afrikaans, and we came up with two: my grandma Leigh Hutchison, and my godfather, Brent Kropman. My mom recommended to me that I contact my godfather, since he actively taught classes in Afrikaans, but I thought it would be much easier to meet with my grandma, who lives in the same town as me. I set up a meeting scheduled the day before the deadline with her, and when the day arrived, hopped on the call. The only problem was, she had no idea what on earth the poem was talking about due to the old Afrikaans. Even though she was born and raised in a similar era to van Niekerk, she grew up learning what she calls “conversational Afrikaans” and not “high Afrikaans,” and therefore couldn’t nicely translate Wintervink. As a result, she was not able to give me a literal translation, only a vague summary of the occurrences of the poem. At this point, I was very stressed out, because I needed a translation for the next day, and I was also heading to Atlanta for the weekend.
The next morning, I messaged my godfather, Brent Kropman. He offered to help me, which was a huge relief. An even bigger relief was when I texted him the poem, he said “it’s not an easy one… [but] I will be able to help you.” Then, as I was about to join the call, I got a file from Brent with the caption “does this help you?” In this file was a literal translation of the poem! I could not have been happier with this, and we proceeded to call and catch up, which I hadn’t been able to do in a long time. I even learned that he and his friends (mind you, 30-40 year old grown men), had gathered around at a barbeque and translated this poem for me. One of my godfather’s friends, CJ Nel, even made me an audio recording of his really nice voice reading Wintervink. These guys deserve so much respect for getting together, at a gathering between friends on a Friday night, to translate a poem from Afrikaans into English for one of the guy’s godsons who lives 3000 miles away. Once I had the literal translation with some helpful notes, I completed the analysis of the poem and was able to begin translating.
During this unit in Eric’s class, we learned that there is no way for someone to translate a poem perfectly from one language into another; one must make different translations of the poem that emphasize different features of the poem in order to communicate that feature into the other language. In the case of Wintervink, the Afrikaans is able to show the emotions of bravery and wonder at the very same time. Maybe a skilled poet could have been able to aptly represent both of the emotions of this poem in English, but I am not that, so I decided I would make one that portrayed each emotion. For the first poem, I decided I would portray bravery. To communicate this, I changed words around to emphasize the bird’s dire situation in the original, portray his flying away as a survival, and hint that the story the people who saw the bird were telling was about the bravery of the bird for escaping that situation. One challenge I faced in making this translation was figuring out how dramatic to make it in the first stanza, since it was mostly verbs, which are in my opinion hard to change subtly. To solve this, I decided to keep some of my changes from the literal translation, like “entanglement” to “entrapment,” “puffs his chest” to “inflates his chest” and “warm-red his throat flushes” to “color his throat regains,” but get rid of others like “polishes” and “budding knobs of the ash tree.” By only adjusting some of the phrases and keeping in mind the heaviness and fashion of the old language, I ended up with a very stress-inducing story but also hopeful translation of Winterfink.
The second aspect of the poem I wanted to translate was the wonder and joy that this poem brings to the audience. For this, I changed the subtle in-between language the other way, making it more festive. One casualty that came with this translation was the loss of the more old-fashioned, formal language, but instead of fixing it, I decided I would embrace it and focus on getting other sections right. By letting this feature go, I was able to achieve both a similar rhythm to the original and a repetition of the prefix “re-” (re-count, re-member, re-ality) in place of the repetition of “ver-.” I was also able to make some clever, funny lines, like “puffs up his down” or “when all is back to white and black,” because I had a little bit more freedom. Overall, this process has changed my idea of what a good translation consists of. Originally, I thought the goal was to retain everything about the poem and create an ideal translation. Now, I understand that there is no ideal situation. To quote Madhu Kaza, “translators often speak about the impossibility of their work, the untranslatability of particular words and texts from one language to another.” There is never a way to ideally translate both the literal translation and the meaning of the text, but they also say you can do one or two parts justice in the translation, and that’s what I tried and experienced for the first time in this project. This project changed my view of my heritage language by showing me the softer side of it. Afrikaans is a very rough, hard sounding language, but this story in all of its softness and beauty has shown me that the language is kind of like a gentle giant.
The other main project in this unit was our erasure poems, during which we also interviewed a family member, but then created an “erasure poem,” using the words of the interviewee, that explained your personal relationship with your heritage languages. During the process, I really enjoyed interviewing my great aunt, Aunt Ilana, and was able to learn so much about her. Before my interview, I didn’t even know she spoke Afrikaans! Afterwards, I now know that she had worked in law defending Black rights in South Africa, has her own unique creole in a way (actually a large inspiration for the poem I created!), and even speaks Afrikaans with her husband when she doesn’t want her kids to hear, the same thing that my parents do! Her creole especially fascinated me because I have never thought about how unique languages are spoken every day. Learning all of this about Aunt Ilana has helped shape my outlook on my heritage languages by helping me come up with a unique view: every person has their own language, and that is formed by the “interwoven strands” of their culture.
For the base of my poem, I recorded a transcript of my almost 30 minute long interview with Aunt Ilana. However, that transcript was nearly eight pages long, so I needed to cut it down. I ended up shortening the final transcript I would eventually make into the poem into the first two pages, where we mainly discuss the topic of our heritage languages rather than something interesting from her past; in the section, we discuss our unique view about the creole and how it manifests in her heritage languages. I agree with her main points, just without the added languages of hers like Hebrew and Yiddish, so it formed the perfect base. However, the whole story was still very much in her perspective and used her voice to portray it. I wanted for my voice to shine through, so there was work to do. For the next step, I whited out the words I did not want, but kept the visible words in the same order, almost like a reverse blackout poem. I made this choice because I think it makes the poem feel more raw and original, as I created both the poem itself and the base; nobody except for me knows what’s under that text, making the structure of the poem feel truly personalized and special. In that way, I feel like nobody could ever copy this poem and it is truly mine. When I first read through the base, most of these words and phrases immediately stood out to me because they felt like things I would say if someone asked me what my experience with my heritage language is. I strongly believe that everybody has culture embedded in their language, and so I talked about this. A great example of this elsewhere in the world comes from French being adapted into Ivorian French: “We’ve tried to rap in pure French, but nobody was listening to us,” said Jean Patrick Niambé, known as Dofy, a 24-year-old Ivorian hip-hop artist… “So we create words from our own realities, and then they spread.” In my aunt Ilana’s case, the creole was formed due to her movement to the United States, and a bringing of her languages there. In this case, however, the creole was formed by the French bringing their language to Ivory coast. Either way, this is a great example of someone’s heritage languages blending together and becoming a creole. The creole makes the music feel more generally Ivorian, because it creates that mix of culture. After, I grabbed some randomly used connection phrases to piece it all together. Looking back, it is remarkable how well I can hear my voice and my perspective while reading this poem, even though all of the words are stolen from my remarkable aunt.
Works Cited
de Kock, Leon. “Marlene van Niekerk.” Poetry International, www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-23457_Van-Niekerk. Accessed 19 May 2025.
Kaza, Madhu. “Editor’s Note: Kitchen Table Translation.” Asterix Journal, 15 Mar. 2021, asterixjournal.com/note-translation/. Accessed 1 June 2025.
Goodreads. “Marlene van Niekerk (Author of Agaat),” Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/author/show/159268.Marlene_van_Niekerk. Accessed 19 May 2025.
Peltier, Elian. “How Africans Are Changing French — One Joke, Rap and Book at a Time.” New York Times, 12 Dec. 2023, www.afropages.fr/new-york-times/how-africans-are-changing-french-one-joke-rap-and-book-at-a-time.