Translating Poetry—Cheryl

There are many questions which haunt the translation of poetry and I found the way some of these points were addressed in the two readings quite enlightening.

To preserve meaning or flow?

Donald Keene seems to be an advocate for being intentional in word choice, especially in translating poetry. In his edits of Sakanishi Shio's translations, for example, he substitutes "spared" for "hoarded" and "my soul has no gills" to "my soul swims without gills". Although it is likely that he has in doing so stretched the meaning of the original slightly, I don't think they are in opposition to it and with these small tweaks the poem reads a lot more beautifully in my opinion. 

To preserve meaning or flow or form?

In "Through a Glass Darkly: Is Translating Poetry Possible", Janine Beichman explains her process translating tanka and that while she hadn't actively limited herself to 31 syllables per poem in the beginning, she found herself naturally gravitating towards it. In the couple of times that I have translated Japanese poetry I found myself coming to the same conclusion as she does—"I like the invention and insights that occur when working within limitations". While adhering to strict limitations might compromise on the translation's flow, I do think that when applied well it keeps the translation recognisable as the original. 

To preserve meaning or flow or form or experience?

Roger Pulvers' suggestion is that instead of trying to pin down two or more of the three above considerations, the translator should instead 'absorb the poem and assimilate it in a process that can only be described as "organic"'. Instead of making the poem look the same or sound the same, his process of understanding the writer, the original audience and their context prioritises ensuring that the translation feels similar to the new audience the way it would have to the original one. I think while this process seems a little more nebulous and reliant on intuition, ultimately it does have to take into account the other two considerations of flow and form, even if only subconsciously. Preserving how the poem feels means understanding the rhythm or flow of the original and having knowledge of what an equivalent might sound like in translation; if the form in the original somehow in turn evokes a certain rhythm or flow, then attention might be required to transpose this form to a similar effect in the translation.