NPR has been celebrating National Poetry Month in the US on Twitter, using the hashtag #NPRPoetry. A recent post posed the question of whether poetry can be translated or if “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” Poet and translator Aaron Coleman translates one of the poetry submissions and discusses his method.
“I approach translation even knowing that it can’t quite be what it is in the original language,” he says.
The language lapses that inhibit an ideal interpretation can ultimately be “a creative, productive failure,” he adds. “Maybe it can open up a new way for us to see what can happen in English and what can happen in Spanish, for me, or whatever the original language is.”
Instead, translation can be transformation. “I think we all want to have translation work as a process of reproduction, but it’s really a process of transformation,” Coleman says.
Comments about this article
Germany
Local time: 09:03
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Feeling the meaning of the poem in its original language, sensing its emotions can help to "translate" it into the target language(s).
Poetry was written by a creative mind and can, therefore, only be "translated" by a creative mind.
Italy
Local time: 09:03
Italian to English
+ ...
They must recreate that artfully expressed idea but the tool with which it was originally crafted has changed and sometimes will chisel away at the original, and sometimes will add to it. In all this transformation the ... See more
They must recreate that artfully expressed idea but the tool with which it was originally crafted has changed and sometimes will chisel away at the original, and sometimes will add to it. In all this transformation the overall tone, and often the rhythm, should still be recognizable.
The satisfaction gained from attempting, and hopefully managing, to successfully translate poetry is directly proportionate to the difficulty of the task in hand! ▲ Collapse
To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator:
You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request »
This discussion can also be accessed via the ProZ.com forum pages.