All of this makes so much sense - especially the difference between translating poetry versus prose. As someone raised with 2-3 other languages in addition to English, I've found prose translations to be adequate even if losing some of the tone, but poetry has felt dead to read in English after having read the original - poets spend so m…
All of this makes so much sense - especially the difference between translating poetry versus prose. As someone raised with 2-3 other languages in addition to English, I've found prose translations to be adequate even if losing some of the tone, but poetry has felt dead to read in English after having read the original - poets spend so much time agonizing over their choice of words and when there are no easy one-to-one correlates, it definitely has a big impact. Perhaps reading a few different translations helps triangulate what the original was trying to say?
Hard for me to judge because I can read just a little French in the original, but reading Neruda and even some Russian poets in English, I find myself moved and astonished over and over.
Agreed, Cynthia - I've read translations of poems translated from other languages that I don't know and really enjoyed the poems. I guess what I meant to say is that till I read the translations of poems from a language that I know did I see how hard it is to translate the beauty in poetry. Am advocating for more translations I suppose to be able to see what each translator/translation brings to the original - especially with poetry.
All of this makes so much sense - especially the difference between translating poetry versus prose. As someone raised with 2-3 other languages in addition to English, I've found prose translations to be adequate even if losing some of the tone, but poetry has felt dead to read in English after having read the original - poets spend so much time agonizing over their choice of words and when there are no easy one-to-one correlates, it definitely has a big impact. Perhaps reading a few different translations helps triangulate what the original was trying to say?
Hard for me to judge because I can read just a little French in the original, but reading Neruda and even some Russian poets in English, I find myself moved and astonished over and over.
Agreed, Cynthia - I've read translations of poems translated from other languages that I don't know and really enjoyed the poems. I guess what I meant to say is that till I read the translations of poems from a language that I know did I see how hard it is to translate the beauty in poetry. Am advocating for more translations I suppose to be able to see what each translator/translation brings to the original - especially with poetry.