short shameful confessions

[larryhammer]

After translating 200-odd poems over the last 15 months, I've come to realize that mediocre poetry is easier to translate than good poetry. The better it is, the more difficult.

Yes, I know, news to no one else. Sometimes I have to bang my head over something hard for a while before recognizing that it is, indeed, a truth.

---L.

Comments

[behindpyramids.livejournal.com]

Actually I had no idea. That's really cool!

[larryhammer]

That quality that makes something poetic is rooted in the nature of the language in which it is expressed. The less of it a poem has, the easier it is to detach the text from that language and express it in another, in a reasonable approximation of its original quality.

Or something like that.

---L.