Xander Graustein

Ubhal

As dèidh Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, ‘A theachtaire tig ón Róimh’

Ged a tha bàrdachd làn breugan

’s e breugan màireannach a th’unnta,

agus chan e breugan sealadach.

’S urrainn dhut earbsa a chur ann an dàn: 

cha robh e fìor an-dè agus cha bhi a-màireach 

ach seall! Cho breagha sa tha am breug, cho milis

– Pàdraig Mackay

Apple

After Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe a messenger comes from rome

Even though poetry is full of lies

The lies are everlasting 

And they are never temporary always here

So you can put your trust in a poem:

It was not true yesterday and it will not be true tomorrow

But look.  How beautiful the  lie is, how sweet it can be

–Translated from Scottish Gaelic by Xander Graustein

Apple

A messenger comes from rome looking for Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe

Although poetry has many lies

the lies are always there, 

never fleeting, never leaving. 

So you can trust a poem.

They weren’t true yesterday and won't be tomorrow,

but see! how beautiful the lie can be, how sweet.

–Translated from Scottish Gaelic by Xander Graustein

What has been left

(An erasure of my interview with Lisa Graustein)

a dropped language to assimilate with white culture 

Dropped because of “racist norms”.     Language was a way to assimilate and become part of a country. 

 only spoke English to his kids to assimilate to the English culture here.

Language was not talked about when you're growing, 

it wasn't important to your parents.

—Xander Graustein

Translator’s Statement

Pàdraig MacAoidh (pronounced Pah-drigd Mah-Kai) or Peter Mackay (in English) is currently the national poet of Scotland, or the “Makar” (Pauline). Born in 1978 on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, he is one of the first primarily Scottish Gaelic speaking Makars and as such has elevated the language of Scottish Gaelic in poetry. Pàdraig MacAoidh has worked at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast, and at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, where he was writer in residence; he lectures on literature at the University of St Andrews (MacAoidh). He not only writes poetry in Scottish Gaelic but has also recently opened his repertoire to incorporate Irish Gaelic. His skillful use of meta topics within his poem allows him to talk about many topics others may stray away from, such as in most of his poems, he uses poetry as the topic. What has been uniquely helpful for me is MacAoidh’s interests in translation and adaptation, where he has translated all of the poems he writes himself into both English and Irish (Scottish Poetry Library).

The poem that I translated is “Ubhal” and it is a very recent poem, and Pàdraig MacAoidh has not said much about this work because he deems it to be one of his “classic poems” or the general style of poem he writes. This poem was published in March 2025 for World Poetry Day and was written after Pàdraig MacAoidh was inducted as the national poet of Scotland. This poem was published and created in his hometown on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. Much of his life is spent with poems of Irish and Scottish Gaelic descent or poetry that was written in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, and it i s an interesting way to look at this poem through the lens of ancient and old poetry, in a similar way in which we use critical lenses he used old poetry. Throughout the poem, Pàdraig MacAoidh talks about how poetry is a lie, and it is a lie that will never leave. What is especially interesting about this is the relation to his lectures in which he talks thoroughly about old Scottish poems (Scottish Poetry Library). The comparison to the old poems–which he spends the majority of his day with–and this poem that converses significantly about poetry as a whole is interesting to look at and to speculate if those old poems influenced this poem in any way (Poncarová).

The translation of this poem was made especially easy by my ability to access Pàdraig MacAoidh’s own translation of his poem (MacAoidh). Whenever I doubted my translation or was confused about what was happening during my translation process, I always knew Pàdraig MacAoidh’s translation could aid me through my process and over the rough patches. Every student in the class got assigned a translation mentor to help them with the preliminary translation of the poem. What was especially helpful for me was the literal translation of the poem I created with my mentor, compared to the more translation-like translation that she had already translated and offered me to use through my work. The comparing and contrasting between the three translation examples I had for my poem–Ubhal–allowed me to, create some of the best translations I could, both in a literal sense and in every way a translation could be perfected. 

For the translation, everyone in the class had to create two translations of the poem they chose, focusing on two different themes of translation. For my translations, I tried to focus on a more literal translation to mimic the dialect and speech patterns of Scottish Gaelic for the first translation, for example much of scottish is spoken two steps forward and one step back–as opposed to english which is fully forward–and as such I tried to mimic that two steps forward as much as I could without making it borderline impossible to read. For the second one, I tried to focus on portraying the point or topic of the poem in English while translating. The  whole challenge of translating which I faced was trying to find the “perfect” translations for the Scottish words–going into the translation process I knew it wasn't possible but trying was the best I could do then–because for many of them, there just weren’t words in English that fit the complete idea. For example the word “sealadach” in Scottish Gaelic means something similar to “only there for a while” or “leaving soon”, and each translation of the poem that I had access to  used a different word to portray “sealadach”, temporary (from my mentor’s translation), transitory (from the literal translation), and fleeting (from Pàdraig MacAoidh’s translation of his poem). For my translations, I went down two different paths for both of my translations. For the first translation, I chose to use temporary as it mimicked the speech pattern/dialect better than transitory and it still meant the same thing. For my second translation, this is where I made some strong decisions about what should be included and what should not. I chose to include two different words to show “sealadach”: “never fleeting, never leaving” is what I landed on for my more translation-like translation. I wanted to incorporate parts of Pàdraig MacAoidh’s translation in my translation to pay homage to the author, and I also wanted to show the tiniest part of repetition that is present in the original poem. 

In my family, our heritage languages are not talked about very much as other topics because when my mom and grandparents were children, at different times, their parents never talked to them about the languages that they come from, and as such when I was younger, language was simply never discussed in my household. While doing this translation, I learned the tiniest bit of Scottish Gaelic, which is important because I am the first one in my family to know any Scottish Gaelic for at least three generations. The lead up to this project was a lot of research surrounding language and how it is important to people in unique ways, this was also where Pumza Fihlani–the author–was talking about the idea that language is more than just a way of communicating “[l]language is about more than simply an idea to communicate with one another, it is also tied in with culture and a way of life for a community” (Pumza).  I found this incredibly interesting when first reading this article because it highlights the extreme importance of language to a group both culturally and in the way that they communicate, an aspect of my languages that I never had growing up because no one in my family spoke them besides english. Another quote from that set of articles that talks about language is  “And that same technology can hasten the demise of other languages” (Poncarová). This was a quote that I felt related to Pàdraig MacAoidh’s poetry more than anything else, because what he does and is doing is creating poetry in a language that not very many people speak anymore. He may not be keeping the language alive by himself, but that is not to discredit the importance he has on poetry and Scottish Gaelic.

The experience of the interview was heartwarming and needed because I am the first generation in a long time  to ask about heritage languages and the previous generations’ experience in America because nobody in my moms generation or her parents' generation ever talked about language. I used a direct quote–from the interview with my mother–without changing anything about it because it felt so powerful as is, “language was not talked about when you’re growing up,” the short little talk with my mother during the interview about how language in general was not very important to the family was important for me to know as a person because I realized that currently I am the only one caring about heritage languages, but also for the poem because it really brings everything together. I wanted to learn about my linguistic heritage, not only because I am the first one in my family to do so, but also because I find language and how it travels very interesting.

One of the first choices I made was to focus on the Prussian/German side of my heritage languages because it is the most recent ancestor/language to immigrate to the United States. I tried to keep a majority of the sentences together in my poem because I wanted it to be readable and not confusing above any other aspect. I tried to engage with the guiding question through the use of my great-grandfather's history and connect to my languages through his experience. Another choice I made was where to put the periods and punctuation in the poem, they split up the poem into 3 distinct topics. While doing another part of the heritage language project, we had to read a poem that was written in one of our heritage languages, I stumbled across the poem “Ubhal”. That poem “Ubhal” was where I drew my structural inspiration from because I liked the length of the poem and the lines.

Works Cited

Johana Poncarová, Petra. “A single overly academic syllable can sink a poem.” Forum Charles University Magazine, 10 Jan 2025, https://www.ukforum.cz/en/main-categories/unilife/9147-a-single-overly-academic-syllable-can-sink-a-poem. Accessed 2 Jun 2025.

MacAoidh, Pàdraig. “Ubhal - Poem.” Scottish Poetry Library, Mar 2025, https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/ubhal/. Accessed 2 Jun 2025.

Mclean, Pauline. “Lewis-born Gaelic poet Peter Mackay appointed Scotland's Makar.” BBC, 3 December 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0x31w69d1o. Accessed 2 June 2025.

Fihlani, Pumza. “Trying to save South Africa's first language.” BBC, 30 August 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39935150. Accessed 2 June 2025.