| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: What do you need to successfully translate poetry? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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| | Jack Doughty 
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:50
Russian to English
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In memoriam | All of the above | Nov 22, 2009 |
Multiple answers ought to be possible for this one. You need to be a good translator, a good writer, to be capable of writing poetry yourself, and if you have no interest in poetry you ought not to accept such a translation anyway.
One thing I think helps a lot is to collaborate with a native speaker of the language from which you are translating, to explain any little nuances in the original which a non-native speaker might miss.
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Understand poetry, which includes:
being a good writer
love poems
and a lot of other things
Have a nice weekend
| | | | Natalia Pedrosa (X)
Local time: 11:50
English to Spanish
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| To love poetry | Nov 22, 2009 |
I don't think you have to be a poet in order to translate poetry, otherwise many translators should be poets and I doubt very much that's the case. Loving what you do makes for many fields of translation, apart from knowing "a little" of the languages.
Happy Sunday!
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| Rather to be a poet | Nov 22, 2009 |
Translators of poetry have long been known to be co-authors (and in some cases even successful competitors) of respective poets.
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Alexander Kupriyanchuk wrote:
Translators of poetry have long been known to be co-authors (and in some cases even successful competitors) of respective poets.
| | | | B D Finch
France
Local time: 11:50
French to English
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| Understanding is not enough | Nov 22, 2009 |
Gianluca Marras wrote:
Understand poetry, which includes:
being a good writer
love poems
and a lot of other things
Have a nice weekend
I think that the idea that one could translate poetry without being a poet is quite wrong. Many people have a deep understanding and appreciation of literature, poetry, film, painting etc. without being able to produce great, or even passably good, literature, poetry etc. Poetry is particularly difficult to translate because it is a highly concentrated and multi-layered form of expression that depends on the sounds, rhythms and nuances, as well as the direct meanings, of the language it is written in. Arguably, there is no such thing as a translation of a poem, only a new poem in another language that is based upon a source poem in the source language.
Think about the impossibility of recreating Chaucer's or Shakespeare's works in modern English, or the Roman de la Rose in modern French. This is, of course, where parallel texts come in and the best solution for me is to see a source poem on one page with the "translation" on the facing page. I find this effective even for languages with which I have only a very slight familiarity, e.g. German, Spanish and Italian. Of course, I find it useless for Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Swedish or Icelandic because of my total lack of knowledge of the script or sounds of those languages. Even using a parallel text translation with e.g. German, Spanish and Italian, my appreciation of the original can only be limited and there will be new poetic invention of sounds and meanings in the translation that could not have been there in the original language.
| | | | Jasna Gonda
Serbia
Local time: 11:50
English to Serbian
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Jack Doughty wrote:
Multiple answers ought to be possible for this one. You need to be a good translator, a good writer, to be capable of writing poetry yourself, and if you have no interest in poetry you ought not to accept such a translation anyway.
[Edited at 2009-11-22 12:37 GMT]
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Jasna Gonda
Serbia
Local time: 11:50
English to Serbian
+ ...
Jack Doughty wrote:
Multiple answers ought to be possible for this one. You need to be a good translator, a good writer, to be capable of writing poetry yourself, and if you have no interest in poetry you ought not to accept such a translation anyway.
One thing I think helps a lot is to collaborate with a native speaker of the language from which you are translating, to explain any little nuances in the original which a non-native speaker might miss.
| | | | | Poetry translation | Nov 22, 2009 |
Natalia Pedrosa wrote:
I don't think you have to be a poet in order to translate poetry, otherwise many translators should be poets and I doubt very much that's the case. Loving what you do makes for many fields of translation, apart from knowing "a little" of the languages.
Happy Sunday!
This is also what I think, Natalia! And if we ask this question concerning any other translation field, it would be required, then, that translators should BE engineers in order to better translate an instruction manual!
Have a nice Sunday!
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:50
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam | Poetry and engineering are not comparable. | Nov 22, 2009 |
I don’t think you can equate translating poetry with translating an engineering manual.
The latter requires a basic competence in engineering, good linguistic skills and good dictionaries. But you don’t have to have personal experience of tightening locking wire, grinding valves or replacing cylinder liners. But to translate poetry well, if you are trying to produce an equivalent poem, not just a prose translation of the meaning, you have to have some talent in producing poems yourse... See more I don’t think you can equate translating poetry with translating an engineering manual.
The latter requires a basic competence in engineering, good linguistic skills and good dictionaries. But you don’t have to have personal experience of tightening locking wire, grinding valves or replacing cylinder liners. But to translate poetry well, if you are trying to produce an equivalent poem, not just a prose translation of the meaning, you have to have some talent in producing poems yourself. Last year I translated a number of song lyrics, which not only had to scan, rhyme and fit the tune, but also to achieve the same emotional effect as the original, which I did to the customer’s satisfaction. I have written a lot of poems and lyrics myself (though very few of them have ever been published, and then only in small-circulation magazines), and I think this sort of ability and experience is what is required. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | a combination | Nov 22, 2009 |
I love poetry, have read volumes of it, studied literature in university and am a good writer and translator.
But I am not certain i'd be able to adequately translate a poem. I don't think i'd do that badly, but someone who has written poetry would probably be the best, and one thing I know about myself is that poetry is not my strong suit when it comes to writing. The few i've written haven't been as bad as teenagers posting in their blogs ...but because i know poetry and read it I know ... See more I love poetry, have read volumes of it, studied literature in university and am a good writer and translator.
But I am not certain i'd be able to adequately translate a poem. I don't think i'd do that badly, but someone who has written poetry would probably be the best, and one thing I know about myself is that poetry is not my strong suit when it comes to writing. The few i've written haven't been as bad as teenagers posting in their blogs ...but because i know poetry and read it I know how hard it would be to translate it.
The important thing is to convey what the poet is trying to convey, in another language. That's hard enough when writing poetry in your own language!
It's also probably a bit of confidence issue. I'd feel like I was trying to carry an egg over a minefield! ▲ Collapse
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Marlene Blanshay wrote:
I love poetry, have read volumes of it, studied literature in university and am a good writer and translator.
But I am not certain i'd be able to adequately translate a poem
Just like Marlene, I also studied literature, I read poetry many times a week, I even wrote poetry in uni, and that's why I don't translate poetry or literature for that matter.
But it's the same with all kinds of literature. It sounds pretentious but having studied the theory of literature, one becomes aware of the "technical" aspects of real literature that most people don't really see. A good literary piece, no matter how simple it is, has different layers--it's not just a plot; having to transfer them all into a different language is almost an impossible task, something has to be given up. I also agree with B D's comment: there is no such thing as a translation of a poem, only a new poem in another language that is based upon a source poem in the source language.
| | | | Jenn Mercer
United States
Local time: 05:50
Member (2009)
French to English
| A poet first... | Nov 22, 2009 |
...but it is also important to be a good translator. I was a poet long before I starting translating professionally. I think that as a poet, it is easy to have the desire to "improve" a translation. As a translator, I know that there needs to be a certain respect for the original and have techniques to help me to work around different challenges.
| | | | | Understanding Of the Poet's Experience/Psychology | Nov 22, 2009 |
In order to translate someone poem accurately, i.e., get across the intended meaning, one has to be able to put him- or herself in the shoes and mind of the original writer, both in terms of the original writer's psychological point of view, and his or her life experience.
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