I think while popular opinion among people unfamiliar with the subject is that translation is just mechanical selection of words that mean the same thing, reading about poetry translation really drives home the fact that in some sense, a translation is very much written by the translator, as opposed to the author of the source text. Both of the readings this week disagree with Robert Frost’s rather extreme statement that “Poetry is what is lost in translation,” but instead relate the liberties that sometimes need to be taken with the source text in order to preserve the poetic quality of the original. In this way, we really do get to understand that the translator must have just as a strong sense for the rhythm and flow of the target language as the original author had of the source language.
One point I did find particularly interesting was Beichman’s treatment of form when translating Yosano Akiko’s tanka, poems with the traditional 5-7-5-7-7 structure. I think translating it to free verse is certainly a valid choice, and I thought her translations were very effective, but there are certainly poems in English where the form is an integral part of how they are constructed. Of course, keeping the exact same structure of 5-7-5-7-7 often does not work in English, but her mention of Seidensticker’s opinion presented a notable but challenging choice. Seidensticker maintained that the equivalent was iambic pentameter, and I wonder how he came to that conclusion. It’s definitely a topic that I might like to explore in more detail.
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