I've resolved the problem of translation. It's about time someone did. Here's my solution.
Regard translation as a perfectly legitimate method of producing poems. Stop thinking of translation as way of reproducing some other text. Once you do that, all the problems magically disappear.
All translations of the same original might be grouped together as the same genre of poem and compared against one another, but never against the original.
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Some feel that to be a serious lit-blog you must have 3,000 word essays. I don't think that the epigrammatic style of blogging is any less serious or respectable. I have other fora for anything over 2,000 words. I am just not that verbose on a daily basis. Do your academic writing in academic journals! I can put forward a suggestive metaphor that is worth 1,000 words by someone who's never learned how to condense ideas. I would let my graduate students write 5 page papers if they could write me 5 good pages.
As I like to say, poetry is what gets found in translation: one more poem has been written.
ResponderEliminarWell no, I didn't make the translator's task harder, I just revealed it for what it was. You already had to be a talented writer to be a good translator, I've just taken away the excuses.
ResponderEliminarHmm, for some reason my comment didn't take. In case you're interested, I posted it on my blog: exoskeleton-johannes.blogspot.com.
ResponderEliminarJohannes