Poetry Translation

I appreciated the coloring book analogy as I think that it depicts the art of translation well. No matter what you think of the original outline, you cannot change it.  While you can make creative choices to bring new life to the work and allow it to be understood by your specific audience more easily, the drawing is permanently cemented. The author states: "As long as you have a reason for what you’re doing, you can change it. However, you cannot change the picture....You have to strike a balance between being creative and not changing the feel or intention of the text." I found that the challenges of translation were especially prevalent with poetry, as the creative aspect is so strong. There is a variety of ways to communicate the feeling of the original work, through tools like word choice, rhyme, and format, and none of them will allow you to create an exact replica of the original. So, I feel that there is much more intuition involved in poetry as you have to hold on to the feelings evoked by the poem and not necessarily the exact content. Another quote that stuck with me was that you, "have to identify with the reader just as much as you identify with the author". While it is important to act as the author's messenger, stepping back and seeing your work as the reader is crucial. This step allows you to process whether you have adjusted the cultural and situational implications in a way that makes the work easy to digest for whoever the new audience is. Finally, the last quote that I found interesting in the reading was the following: "It is all too easy to get up on your high horse about what you perceive as an error, but you can be very embarrassed when you later realize that the text was right and you were the one who had not understood it. Your first assumption should not be that the text is wrong. You have to assume that you haven’t understood it, and check and double-check everything that is problematic." Here, the author emphasizes the importance of having a deep understanding of the text before translating it. You must remember that you are not creating a completely different piece of work. The author has already produced the work and it is your job to understand it in the way that was intended, not to take creative liberty and make changes because you believe they need to be made.

Emma