"now that he has a child / he knows all the local dogs / by name"

[larryhammer]

Back when I posted this, I hadn't started learning Japanese. So when I stumbled across it, looking for something else, I was startled to realize that I can more or less read the originals now (to order looking up a couple words). Edo period poetry? -- way easier than classical Japanese. Just sayin'. So I decided to try my hand at them. Going in order:

Basho:

A winter shower
and me without even a hat?
What to do, what to do ...

Kasa mo naki ware wo shigururu ka nanto-nanto

And here I admit to more startlement: Henderson's first two lines are not only accurate but not bad, better than anything I've come up with. The crashing thump of the third line wipes out any claim to the translation being actually good, but still, fair is fair. I'm not saying my third line is any good either, mind, but it's certainly better than his. In the original, the shower is a transitive verb with the speaker as direct object, but literalize that and you get what sounds like a poetic effect, in contrast to what's a natural construction in Japanese.


Raisan:

Women planting rice --
everything dirty
except their song.

Sa-otome ya yogorenu mono wa uta bakari

More strictly, "young women" or "maidens." Flooded paddies do indeed make muddy work. Henderson's chanting for song is Wrong like a vizier in an orientalist tale.


Issa:

Ah! the swallow
exiting the nose
of the Great Buddha.

Dai-butsu no hana kara izuru tsubame kana

Henderson comes closer to preserving the image order, to greater comic effect. Not necessarily better comic effect, given the crashing rhyme, but greater than mine -- which counts for something for a comic haiku.

---L.