"If I am the storm, if I am the wonder, will I have flashlights, nightmares, and sudden explosions?"

[larryhammer]

Another for my collection of bad poetry: Harold G. Henderson's An Introduction to Haiku. I was warned of its existence by this Making Light thread about unreliable research sources. So of course I had to get it -- not for the translation mistakes, which are a dime a baker's dozen, but because he makes the haiku rhyme.

I'll let that sink in a moment.

Mid-last-century, there was a serious debate about this -- whether use rhyme to mimic some of the other sound effects of Japanese. You can make reasonable (if wrong) arguments for it -- and Henderson even does in his preface -- but his actual results don't help the case. It'd be easy to stack my case by searching for the most egregious examples, but it's more telling to pick three as randomly as possible: eyes closed, open page and point.

Sudden Shower

Not even a hat—
   and cold rain falling on me?
      Tut-tut! think of that!


In the Paddy Field

Women, rice-planting:
   all muddy, save one thing—
      that's their chanting.


The Great Buddha at Nara

Out of the hollow
   of Great Buddha's nose—
      comes a swallow.

1. Basho: Kasa mo naki ware wo shigururu ka nanto-nanto
2. Raisan: Sa-otome ya yogorenu mono wa uta bakari
3. Issa: Dai-butsu-no hana kara izuru tsubame kana

I don't read Japanese, but the transcriptions make it pretty clear the originals don't chime so insistently. Or so painfully.

Or, really, at all.

---L.

Comments

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[larryhammer]

You sound pleased.

---L.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

It's that schadenfreude you were mentioning earlier.

[larryhammer]

My schaden or Henderson's?

---L.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you're suffering the most here. Though I am impressed at the amount effort which can be expended in the production of something so profoundly awful.

[larryhammer]

One always is, with bad poetry. Even more than with bad novels.

---L.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

It's just such a stunning amount of work.

(...you really do have quite the masochistic streak, don't you?)

[larryhammer]

Depends on how bad a pun you can spin me.

---L.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Oh..my..god...

The first one sounds like a Winnie the Pooh cartoon and the last one--there are no words.

I am torn between laughing myself sick and total horror.

[larryhammer]

Oh, there are words. Eleven of them.

Unfortunately.

---L.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Now that you have posted the random ones to convince us how truly unfortunate these things are, you should post some of the egregious examples to make us laugh. ;)

[larryhammer]

Once I manage to finish reading it, I might.

---L.

[tnh.livejournal.com]

I tracked down a Portuguese translation of the Basho. I suspect the Babelfish Portuguese-to-English translation is still better than Henderson's:

Sem guarda-chuva
E sob a chuva de inverno —
Bem, bem!

Without umbrella and under the rain of winter - Well, well!

[larryhammer]

Heavens. Babelfish did quite nicely.

I tried posting a followup comparing other translations, but my library of Japanese verse is thinner than I expected -- only one book has any of these three, and it doesn't have that particular Basho.

Or maybe this is a sign of Henderson's excentricity.

---L.