can a poem be translated into different languages?

[scaepgoat]

I need the opinions of poets about this task. ı hope you can help me...!!!

[Remarkable]

Yes,but it is a difficult task.You must be a good master of both languages and also of concepts.It is not about translating:it's about bringing it in that language,about making it feel as if it was written originaly like that.

[Kafka's Crow]

Translation is a highly creative and interpretive act. Translator adds something of his own while some things are 'lost in translation'. Even reading is an interpretive act like translation, hence all the instability of language and its ability to communicate.

[Karl Rommel]

No! You have to be a master of both languages and even then it is difficult to translate those subtle nuances and quirkiness of phrase that make the poem attractive in the first place. If a poet appeals to you and s/he writes in a different language, then learn it.

[Splendour]

It's really hard...I've once wrote a English poem and posted on a Chinese forum, and someone attempted to translate it. I must say that person's English is not that great..considering he translated "fair" as in that of the judging rather than beauty. I won't go as far as impossible, but you lose certain linguistic beauty as well as the underlying tones, at least that's my experience from sometimes trying to translate chinese poems into English for my own amusement and failing miserablely.

[Pensive]

Yes, but it loses a lot during that process just like the conversion of energy results in some loss.

[Aiculík]

It can, but it is extremely difficult. First, the translator must know both languages perfectly. It's not enugh to have large vocabulary to understand what words mean, or to know grammar... there are many other things that translator of a poem must know - e.g. rhythm, metre, stress, structure of syllables, stylistic devices ...

Yet it is possible and there are some people who are very good at it - often poets themselves - and thanks to them it is possible to enjoy poetry from foreign authors.

[protagonist]

of course it can translated but it doesn't have the same meaning doesn'T affected people who read it with his/her second language..

[Megan Dickinson]

Yes, but it would require lots of knowledge on both languages. However, I still think that the original language the poem is written in will be the most expressive. ^^

[JBI]

It is impossible to replicate, but it is possible to still create something beautiful.

[aabbcc]

In theory, yes. In practice, probably not.

Why? It would require somebody who is not only a master of both (or more, but let us assume two here) languages in sense of the ability of expression on any kind of level (from street talk to academic writing) in the given languages and the understanding of those layers of the language. Those kind of people are, after all, rather common in academia and in the so-called "cultural" circles, yet the vast majority of them would never be able to do it; so we come to the conclusion that the mastery of both languages is a prerequisite, but not the only one.

Another thing it takes is a sensibility for language and for its ways. This is a quality not everyone has in their native language, let alone in the learnt one - the sensibility for the nuances and, generally, what Aiculík mentioned in her post.
However, the sensibility is for both languages in question - I know some bilinguals who certainly do not have equal sensibility for their languages nor do, frankly, *I* have got it for the languages I speak. (e.g. I theoretically can write a poem in Russian as it is my - secondary - native language, but I am never going to be a 'poet' in Russian, since from the early childhood I never felt Russian to the extent I felt Croatian, or even English. Actually, it went to the point that I preferred reading Croatian translations of Russian poetry, despite understanding the original too, simply because of that feeling, let alone the choice of a language for my own expression.)

So, two conditions so far - mastery of both languages, which is relatively likely, and a sensibility for both, which is not necessarily that which accompanies the former. Is that enough? Well... no.

The next thing you would need in our Ideal Translator is the ability to switch codes (which is not to be meant the "code-switching", which is entirely irrelevant and different effect of a similar name), on two levels.
Level one is basic translation level - our Ideal Translator needs to be able to translate to-from his languages, that is, have an ability to replace a sign from one system with an appropriate sign from another system. Knowing two or more languages does not necessarily mean knowing how to translate! I know people fluent in two languages who are unable to translate as they seem to have two entirely severed systems in their heads and they do not seem to be able to switch from one to another constantly and thus engage in the activity of translating. To make the whole thing better, this is especially true for people with good knowledge of the language and with feeling for each language. It is almost that the more you know and feel the language, the harder it is to convey its signs to the signs of another system. And we are still stuck on level one.
Level two is translation of art (i.e. not just pure mechanical translating as the above), which requires also a sensibility in translation, i.e. in the art of translating. Translation, after all, basically means re-writing the original poem in the another language. So, other than superb linguistic sensibility for each language apart, you need sensibility for how one relates to another, for how the signs of one are connected to the signs of another, for translating "sense after sense, and not word after word" (classical rule from school ), and for the individual needs of each poem - from asonances, aliterations, rhytm, meter, and on. And, of course, one hell of a good feeling/intuition to combine all that not to be the slave of form, and yet not to write a poem essentially different than the original one. There is a thick line between each of the extremes, and very few translators manage to balance on it.

And, of course, the thing complicates the further the languages and cultures are set apart. It is relatively easy, even having the above in mind, to rewrite a poem from French to Italian, when you consider an option of rewriting it to Japanese - in the spirit of entirely different language and entirely different culture. That is the point on which things start to boarder the impossible.

So, I will not say a priori that it is impossible - I have read some good translations, and met some good translators; but there probably is no Ideal Translator we tried to sketch above. And even those good are very, very small minority of gifted ones which usually write themselves (and thus have a good feeling for language and literature). All the other, when it comes to poetry, are at best average translators. And are not to be judged as such, as it takes not only hard work, but talent and something of the intuitive knowledge to be able to translate poetry well - and simply not everyone has that gift.

From my own experiences, as I speak a few languages, even in the case of superb translations, there is somewhat of a different 'taste' in the poem. For those of you who are, say, wine or tea connoisseurs, you could compare it to having a couple of of same kind, but for a note or two different specimens of wine/tea before you. It is essentially the same thing, but it does have a different taste in your mouth - that is how I feel about translations of literature, especially of poetry.
That does not mean that I a priori read only originals if I can. For some strange reason I prefer some 'tastes' to other ones, so there are cases in which I will rather read translation - insisting on the original for the sake of the original despite your own preferences is not really my thing.

[Lote-Tree]

I need the opinions of poets about this task. ı hope you can help me...!!!

The message can be translated but not original "beauty" of original language.

But sometimes Translated work can become something quite different in a another language which carries true essence of the original...but becomes something unique in it's own right...

[Dori]

It can, but it is extremely difficult. First, the translator must know both languages perfectly. It's not enugh to have large vocabulary to understand what words mean, or to know grammar... there are many other things that translator of a poem must know - e.g. rhythm, metre, stress, structure of syllables, stylistic devices ...

Yet it is possible and there are some people who are very good at it - often poets themselves - and thanks to them it is possible to enjoy poetry from foreign authors.

I agree.

Boris Pasternak, a poet and the author of Dr.Zhivago, translated Shakespeare into Russian and did an excellent job from what I've heard. Apparently his gifts for poetic translation were "virtually unmatched." For those who know Russian, perhaps you could compare a few lines. The following passages include the English, and then the Russian translation below it.

From Hamlet:

Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
I took thee for thy better; take thy fortune;
Thou findst to be too busy is some danger.

Proshchai, vertliavyi, glupyi khlopotun!
Tebia ia sputal s kem-to povazhnee.
Ty vidish’, suetlivost’ ne k dobru.

From Othello:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,
Thou cunningst pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.

Kogda ia pogashu
Svetil’nik i ob etom pozhaleiu,
Ne gore—mozhno vnov’ ego zazhech’,
Kogda zh ia ugashu tebia, siian’e
Zhivogo chuda, redkost’ bez tseny,
Na svete ne naidetsia Prometeia
Chtob vnov’ tebia zazhech’ kak ty byla.

Any takers?

[stlukesguild]

First of all, no translation, however good it may be, can exactly reproduce the original work in a new language. Language does not work like that. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who himself produced some marvelous translations (The Early Italian Poets which includes Dante's La Vita Nuova) offers up his own defense... and definition of the goals of translation which I quite admire:

The life blood of rhymed translation is this-that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more more possession of beauty. Poetry, not being an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether secondary to this chief aim. I say literality, not fidelity, which is by no means the same thing.

In David Paul's translations of the poems of Paul Valery the translator writes in his introduction that he imagines translation as not far different from transcription in music. In most cases, unless we are speaking of transcribing a work of music between two closely related instruments (a clavichord to a harpsichord) the act of transcription is not a mere rendering of the same exact notes played upon a new instrument. The possibilities of an organ are far different from those of a violin. Thus the transcription seeks to capture the music with as much fidelity to the expressive intentions of the original... but utilizing the capabilities and strengths of the new instrument. Consider for example the following "versions" of Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D-minor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9reoUinXgA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd_oIFy1mxM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5kUViNYZHM

Each of these versions is marvelous in its own way and each captures Bach's music. Each produces a work of beauty in the "language" of its choice. The "original" was long thought to have been the organ version... which is certainly the most know. A good number of musicologists now suggest that the work may have originally been composed for violin. Stokowski's orchestral transcription, famous from Disney's Fantasia, is marvelous in itself.

In spite of being declared a universal language without need for translation from one language to another, "translation", in a manner, exists in art. In this case I speak of the manner in which a single artist may "translate" an image from one medium to another. Consider this drawing by Michelangelo:



Which becomes this painting:



Each of these works is a unique and marvelous work of art in and of itself. The drawing has certain elements which certainly cannot be captured in the painting... but the painting surely has captured the "music" of the original while producing a new work of beauty within a new language using the strengths of that language.

Translation of poetry is certainly difficult to do well... perhaps far more difficult than translating prose. There is so much to consider: rhythm, rhyme, the length of the line, assonance, consonance, the sound of the words as music, the various multiple "meanings" of words and phrases. There is no ideal translator and can be because language cannot be simply as in mathematics (A is to 1 and B is to 2, etc...). Some argue that the great translator must be fluent in both languages. Is this true? I have read some marvelous translations where the translator was a marvelous writer in English who worked with scholars and linguists from the second language. Do we really imagine we will ever find a poet also fluent in Akkadian/Babylonian who will make the ideal translation of Gilgamesh? Which brings me to the question of whether a successful poetic translator need to be a successful poet. Some of the best translators were poets: Longfellow, Nerval, Baudelaire, Rossetti, Richard Wilbur, etc... Of course some of the worst translators were good poets as well. Some poets put too much of themselves into the translation. I think especially of Robert Lowell. I truly love some of his "imitations"... but they are often so far from the original that one imagines them as being poems "after" an original... variations, not translations. Still... unless one plans on mastering every language that one wishes to read poetic works in (certainly an impossibility in my case) then one must depend upon translations.

[muzirobin]

Robert Frost said, Poetry is something lost in translation.