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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3639 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 30, 2023

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You can get rhyming translations that try to maintain the spirit of the poem while making it amenable to English ears.

I don't buy it. The aesthetics of a good poem go much deeper than rhyme.

I've seen the breakdowns of poetic translations by their authors, and the rabbit hole goes much deeper than just getting the words right and making them rhyme. Yes, there are self-centered translators, usually well-known poets themselves, that just freestyle, but that's basically counts as reading a new poem by them and not a faithful translation.

The ones I'm speaking about actually break down the poem to identify all the tools the author used and reproduce them in the translation. Enjambment and an accompanying caesura? Alliteration? Metric deviations? Internal rhymes? All of this is examined, analyzed and reproduced so the translation has the same effect on the reader as

Of course, the further you get from your own language family, the harder it gets. How do you translate a kireji in a haiku?

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