I WOULD GIVE ALL METAPHORS FOR ONE WORD

Robert Cottrell — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:32:50 +0000

AND OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT POETRY IN TRANSLATION

The effect of a succesful translation is like walking through the streets of a foreign city and finding that you can understand what is being said around you, though you also know the language is not your own. By Ariel Ramchandani ...

From our arts blog, MOREOVER

DAVID ORR'S article on Zbigniew Herbert in The New York Times Book Review got me thinking about translation. I believe--along, I imagine, with many other people-- that Poland's poets are among the best in the world. And yet, like many others, I do not experience these poets in Polish. As Mr Orr says: "Of course, for most of us, discovering ‘the Poland that is real’means reading works translated from Polish."

If you ask me, Polish sure sounds good in English. It is perhaps a conceit of an English speaker, as well as a testament to the skill of the poets and translators, that I feel this way. I have not read a single poem by a Polish poet in Polish--or in any language other than English, for that matter. But I do know that a good translation makes the reader aware of what a poem means, and at the same time makes the reader aware that it is not English she is reading. In this way a successful translation is like walking through the streets of a foreign city and realising that you can understand what everyone is saying around you, if only just barely. read more »