Work Text:
4 years, nine months after Hatchards
"Mitchell's English is better than Rilke's German."
Aziraphale looked up from his book so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash.
"I'm sorry, what?"
They were in bed – their usual evening routine. Aziraphale with a novel, Crowley with what appeared to be poetry. It was peaceful. It was domestic.
It was – apparently – about to become a battlefield.
"Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Duino Elegies," Crowley said, not looking up from his book. "Better than the original German. More beautiful. Clearer."
Aziraphale made a noise that could charitably be described as strangled. "That's – you can't – that's heresy. It’s Rilke."
"It's an aesthetic judgment."
"It's an incorrect aesthetic judgment. Translation is always inferior to the original. Always. That's the fundamental nature of translation – you lose something in the crossing."
"Not always." Crowley turned a page. "Sometimes you gain something."
"You can't gain from translation! The best you can hope for is to minimize loss!" Aziraphale was sitting up now, book abandoned. "This is basic translation theory –"
"Translation theory written by people who are precious about originals."
"I have a PhD in comparative literature."
"And I speak four languages. Your credentials don't make you right, they just make you credentialed." Crowley finally looked up, grinning. "Also, you're doing the thing again."
"What thing?"
"The 'I have a few PhDs therefore I'm correct about whatever I say' thing. Very attractive. Really."
"I'm not –" Aziraphale stopped. "Fine. You think translations can be better than originals?"
"I know they can be."
"Name one. One translation that's genuinely, defensibly better than the original."
"Mitchell's Rilke –"
"Doesn't count. I'm not conceding Rilke. Name another."
Crowley sat up, matching Aziraphale's energy. "I'll do you one better. I'll prove it. Tomorrow. We're going on a tour."
"A tour of what?"
"Edinburgh bookshops. I'm going to show you examples of translations that transcend their originals. And you're going to admit I'm right."
"And when you fail?"
"If I fail – which I won't – I'll admit that translations are always inferior and I'll never argue about literature with you again."
"You couldn't stop arguing with me about literature if you tried."
"Probably true. But the attempt would be noble." Crowley held out his hand. "Deal?"
Aziraphale looked at the offered hand. Looked at his husband's smug, confident face. Looked at the poetry book that had started this whole ridiculous argument.
"Deal. But when I'm right, you have to stop being so casually dismissive of scholarly consensus."
"I'm not dismissive, I'm sceptical. But deal, anyway. Tomorrow, noon. Wear comfortable shoes. This is going to take a while."
They met outside Blackwell's bookshop at noon the next day. October in Edinburgh was doing its thing – grey sky, threat of rain, wind that cut through every layer of clothing.
"Ready to be proven wrong?" Crowley asked, holding the door open.
"Ready to watch you fail spectacularly," Aziraphale replied, but he was smiling.
Inside, Crowley went straight for the poetry section. Pulled a book without hesitation – clearly, he'd been planning this.
"First example: Seamus Heaney's Beowulf."
"That barely counts," Aziraphale protested. "It's the same language."
"Old English and modern English are NOT the same language. You need specialized training to read the original. Most people can't." Crowley opened to the first page. "Read this."
He showed Aziraphale a passage:
"Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon"
"Can you understand that?" Crowley asked.
"Well, no, but – "
"Exactly. Now listen to Seamus Heaney’s translation."
"So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness."
Crowley looked up. "Heaney starts with 'So.' One word. It captures the oral tradition of epic poetry – the storyteller commanding attention, pulling you into the tale. The original Hwæt means something like 'Lo!' or 'Behold!' but that sounds ridiculous in modern English. 'So' works. It's not a literal translation, but it achieves the same effect."
Aziraphale took the book, read more. "The rhythm is quite good."
"It's extraordinary. Heaney makes Beowulf accessible without dumbing it down. He translates the feeling of oral epic poetry into modern English. That's not inferior – that's masterful."
"But something is still lost. The specific cultural resonance of Old English warrior culture –"
"– is lost anyway, because it doesn't exist anymore. But something else is gained. Modern readers actually experience the poem instead of just studying it as a linguistic artifact." Crowley grinned. "That's one. Three more to go."
"That's one maybe. I'm not conceding yet."
"Noted. Come on – next stop."
Lighthouse Bookshop was smaller, cozier, the kind of place where you could spend hours and the staff would bring you tea unprompted.
Crowley headed for the Spanish poetry section.
"Second example: Roy Campbell translating Federico García Lorca."
"Campbell is good," Aziraphale admitted. "But –"
"Listen first, bitch second." Crowley found the poem he wanted, opened to "Romance Sonámbulo."
"Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas."
Then he read Campbell's translation:
"Green, how I want you green.
Green wind. Green branches."
"Now you read it aloud," Crowley said.
Aziraphale did. "Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches..."
He stopped. Read it again, feeling the rhythm.
"It works," he said, surprised.
"It more than works. Campbell maintains Lorca's obsessive repetition of verde – green – which is the entire emotional core of the poem. But he also makes it work in English rhythm."
"The repetition does create a kind of incantation," Aziraphale admitted.
"Exactly. Campbell didn't just translate words – he translated sound. Different language, same magic."
"That's... two. Possibly. I'm still not convinced these are better than the originals, just good in their own right."
"We'll see. Two more stops."
Topping & Company was gorgeous – three floors of books in a converted Georgian building, the kind of place that made you want to read everything immediately.
"Homer," Crowley announced, heading for the Classics section.
"Oh no. No. You're not going to convince me about Homer. I read Homer in Greek."
"Of course you do. Listen anyway." Crowley pulled out Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad.
"Mēnin aeide, thea, Pēlēiadeō Achilēos"
"Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles"
"Fagles starts with one word," Crowley said. "Rage. Not 'wrath,' not 'anger' – rage. That urgency, that violence –"
"– isn't in the literal Greek," Aziraphale finished. "The Greek is 'Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles.' Fagles is adding interpretation."
"He's adding drama. He's making it immediate for modern readers. The Iliad is a violent, urgent poem about rage and death and honour. Fagles captures that in his first word."
Aziraphale read more of the translation. The battle scenes, the death of Patroclus, Achilles's grief.
"It's very good," he admitted.
"It's more than good. It makes Homer live. How many people can read ancient Greek? A few thousand? Fagles lets millions experience Homer."
"You're conflating accessibility with quality –"
"I'm saying that for English readers, Fagles might be better than Homer. Because they can actually experience it instead of just studying it."
Aziraphale was quiet, reading more.
"Three," he said finally. "I'll grant you three. But accessibility isn't the same as superiority."
"Isn't it? What good is the best poem in the world if no one can read it?"
They stood there in Topping & Company, arguing about Homer, while other customers browsed around them and a staff member smiled knowingly.
"Next stop," Crowley said. "Last one. The best one. I'm winning."
"You're not winning, you're making decent points."
"Same thing."
The Scottish Poetry Library was Crowley's favourite place in Edinburgh – all light and wood and poetry, free and quiet and perfect.
"Final and best example," Crowley said. "Edwin Morgan translating Marina Tsvetaeva. Russian to Scots."
"Oh, you're cheating now. Morgan writes adaptations, not translations."
"He's capturing Tsvetaeva's revolutionary spirit, her linguistic playfulness, her energy." Crowley pulled out the collection, opened to a poem.
"Я хочу быть понят моей страной,
а не буду понят –
что ж?!"
"The literal translation would be something like this."
I want to be understood by my country,
but if I'm not understood –
what then?!
“And this is what Edwin Morgan's makes of it.”
I want ma country tae unnerstaun me,
an if it disnae –
whit then?!
"Morgan uses Scots," Crowley explained, "because it carries the same revolutionary, anti-establishment energy as Tsvetaeva's Russian. Both are languages of the working class, both are political choices. He's not translating words – he's translating class consciousness, rebellion, fuck-you energy."
Aziraphale read more. The poems were alive, angry, joyful, defiant. He couldn't speak for a moment.
"Alright," he said finally. "You did it. Four translations that – " He paused. " – that transcend their originals in specific ways for specific readers."
"HA!" Crowley actually jumped. "You admitted it! I win!"
"You win on a technicality. These are extraordinary translations that work brilliantly in English. That doesn't mean they're objectively better –"
"Nothing is objectively better in art. But they're aesthetically equal or superior for English-speaking readers. Which was my point."
They stood in the Scottish Poetry Library, surrounded by poetry in every language, grinning at each other like competitive idiots.
"You're very pleased with yourself," Aziraphale observed.
"I am. I won a literary bet against a man with oodles of PhDs."
"The bet was about aesthetics, not credentials."
"Even better. I won on merit." Crowley kissed him, there in the poetry library. "Admit I'm right."
"You're... not entirely wrong."
"I'll take it. Come on – let's go home. You're buying me victory dinner."
"That wasn't part of the bet –"
"New bet. Loser buys dinner."
"That's not how bets work –"
"Too late, already decided."
They left the poetry library arguing, Crowley victorious, Aziraphale grudgingly admiring.
They were home, shoes off, wine open, sprawled on the sofa with books around them like protective fortifications.
"I have a counter-argument," Aziraphale said.
Crowley looked over. "Oh no."
"Oh yes. You showed me four translations that transcend originals. Now I'm showing you four originals that can't really be translated. To prove that loss still matters."
"Angel, I already won the bet –"
"This isn't about the bet. This is about truth. You proved translations can transcend. I'm proving they can't always." Aziraphale pulled books from their shelves. "Four examples of untranslatability. Ready?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"No. First example."
Aziraphale opened to a passage of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, showed Crowley the German.
"Goethe uses Gretchen as the diminutive of Margarete. In German, diminutives carry connotations of innocence, youth, affection. Gretchen isn't just a name – it's a character description. English doesn't have equivalent diminutive structures. Translations usually just keep 'Gretchen' and add footnotes."
"So readers understand through context –"
"They understand a meaning. Not the meaning. Not the cultural weight. Not the way it immediately tells German readers who this character is." Aziraphale looked at him. "Something is lost."
Crowley read the passage. "Fair point."
Aziraphale then opened Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and went to the passage "L'Invitation au voyage".
“Listen to the music of it – the sounds, the rhythm, the way French vowels shaped the meaning.”
"Mon enfant, ma sœur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!"
"Now read Richard Howard's English translation," Aziraphale said, handing over another book.
Crowley read:
"My child, my sister,
dream of the sweetness
of going there to live together!"
"It's good," Crowley admitted. "But –"
"But the music is gone. The French sounds can't be replicated in English. Howard's translation is beautiful. It's not this beautiful."
Crowley read both versions again. "You're right. Something is lost."
Aziraphale's voice was quieter when he opened Paul Celan’s Todesfuge.
"Paul Celan writing about the Holocaust in German – the language of the perpetrators. That linguistic irony, that horror – writing about Nazi death camps in the language the Nazis spoke. English translations can convey the content, but they can't convey that specific trauma. That's embedded in the choice of language itself."
He showed Crowley the poem, the famous line:
"Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland"
"Death is a master from Germany. The translation works. But the weight of writing that in German, as a Jewish survivor – that's untranslatable."
Crowley was quiet. "Yeah. That's – you're right. That can't be fully translated."
Then Aziraphale pulled out a slim volume – The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke.
"This is how this whole argument started, why I was so stubborn. Why I can never believe a translation of Rilke is superior. This is Rilke's prose poem about a young cavalry officer during the Turkish wars. It's one continuous flow of language – entirely musical. Written in a kind of heightened, rhythmic German that's almost incantatory."
He opened to the climactic passage, read aloud in German:
"Er läuft um die Wette mit brennenden Gängen, durch Türen, die ihn glühend umdrängen, über Treppen, die ihn versengen, bricht er aus aus dem rasenden Bau. Auf seinen Armen trägt er die Fahne wie eine weiße, bewusstlose Frau. Und er findet ein Pferd und es ist wie ein Schrei: über alles dahin und an allem vorbei, auch an den Seinen.
Aziraphale stopped, let the German hang in the air. Then he read the English translation:
Through the blazing halls he is running a race, through doors that greet him with fiery embrace, down stairways that rise up and sear his face, he bursts forth into the raging night. And in his arms he carries the flag like a pale woman who has fainted in fright. And he finds a horse, and is off like a scream: leaving everything there, passing where he has been, even his comrades.
"The English is competent," Aziraphale said. "But listen to what's lost. In German, the rhythm is everything – brennenden Gängen, glühend umdrängen, Treppen die ihn versengen – the alliteration of burning, glowing, scorching creates a sonic pattern of fire. It sounds like flames. The English can't replicate that."
He pointed to another line. "Wie ein Schrei – like a scream. In German, Schrei is sharp, violent, literally sounds like screaming. English 'scream' is softer. The word itself can't carry the same sonic violence."
Crowley took the book, read both versions carefully. "The English tells the story, tries to replicate the rhythm. But you're right – the sound of it, the way the German words physically enact what they're describing – that doesn't cross over."
"Exactly. It's pure sound and motion. Even a good translation – and this is a good translation – can only approximate what the German does."
Aziraphale read another section aloud, letting Crowley hear the cascading rhythm.
"This whole poem is meant to be read aloud. It's about youth and war and death and glory, and the language itself is young and urgent and breathless. Translating it into English prose – no matter how good – is like describing music instead of playing it."
Crowley was quiet, reading more of both versions. "Okay. You win this one completely. Something essential is lost. It doesn't fully translate."
"Some texts are too embedded in their original language," Aziraphale said softly. "The music is the meaning. When you translate, you can keep the story but you lose the song."
They sat on the sofa surrounded by books in multiple languages, both of them quiet.
"So we're both right," Crowley said finally.
"We're both right. Translation can transcend. And translation always loses something."
Crowley pulled Aziraphale closer, kissed his temple. "It's like our marriage."
"What?"
"It's the perfect marriage metaphor. We're two different people, two different languages. We try to understand each other, translate our thoughts and feelings across the gap between consciousnesses."
"And sometimes the translation is beautiful," Aziraphale continued. "Sometimes you understand me better than I understand myself."
"And sometimes something is lost. Something that can't be translated, that stays locked in one person's experience."
"But we keep trying."
"Because the attempt itself matters. The conversation matters. Even when perfect understanding is impossible."
They sat there holding each other, the books around them evidence of the endless human attempt to speak across difference.
"I have an idea," Aziraphale said.
"Oh no."
"We should teach a course together. On translation theory. Examining both transcendent translations and untranslatable originals."
"You want to co-teach with me? I'm not an academic –"
"You're a polyglot with strong opinions and good taste. That's enough. We'd teach it together. Team-taught. Students seeing two people argue productively about literature, model how to disagree while respecting each other's expertise."
Crowley was quiet, considering. "Would we have to write a syllabus?"
"Obviously."
"Together?"
"Obviously."
"So we'd argue about every single reading choice."
"Absolutely. It would take us months to agree on anything."
Crowley grinned. "Perfect. Let's do it."
Three weeks later
They were in bed reading – the cycle continuing.
Aziraphale had Fagles' Odyssey. Crowley had Baudelaire in French.
"You're reading Baudelaire in the original," Aziraphale observed.
"After your pompous speech about untranslatable French music, I felt I should at least try."
"And?"
"You were right. Howard's translations are beautiful, but this –" Crowley gestured at the French. "This is something else. Yeah. This is better."
Aziraphale smiled. "You are admitting I was right about something?"
"Don't let it go to your head. You're still wrong about Mitchell's Rilke being inferior to the German."
"I never said Mitchell's Elegies were inferior – I said the Cornet is untranslatable."
They argued about Rilke for twenty minutes, both of them laughing, neither of them conceding, both of them knowing this argument would continue forever.
Translation and marriage, marriage and translation – both impossible, both necessary, both requiring the constant attempt to understand across difference.
Some things are lost. Some things are gained. Both things are true.
But the conversation – the endless, argumentative, loving conversation – that was the whole point.