Translating Poetry - Lane

 I appreciated Beichman's comment that "so much is lost in translation that a great deal must be put back in," and I think it rings especially true in reference to the translation of poetry. Kafu's decision to slightly rearrange the position of the sixth line in La Lune Blanche introduces a different meaning. Still, this meaning aligns with the poetic feeling of the original French poem. In this way, translating poetry may require the infusion of differing semantic meanings, but the poetic meaning is maintained or even enhanced through these differences. I think this anecdote also closely aligns with Pulvers' argument that the translation of poetry is organic, rather than mechanical--Kafu absorbed the feeling of the moon and the landscape moving in unison and enhanced it by infusing love and intimacy into the relationship between the moon and the landscape.

I also found Beichman's example of modern haiku translation and discussion of Ishihara Yatsuka's haiku interesting; I hadn't considered the possibility of enjambment in haiku before, as I tend to read them in one breath/one line, as is common. Beichman notes that maintaining the enjambment leads to a difference in "visual and auditory rhythms [which] creates a syncopation that brings the whole soundscape alive." The role of visuals in poetry certainly cannot be discounted, and maybe it is one of the reasons people say poetry is untranslatable. Still, steps can be made to either maintain the visual similarity or to create a different kind of stand-out visual aspect of form to "organically" translate the poem; to translate the poetry behind it instead of the words that lie at the forefront. Beichman, for instance, does this in her translation of Yosano Akiko; she staggers the lines to create the visual image of rain falling to emphasize the repetition of "ame" in the original.