2007/9/27, Donald J. HARLOW <[log in to unmask]>:
> [...] Having seen some of the purported translations of Shel Silverstein's
> poetry posted here in the last day or two, I would agree. Silverstein
> has, in fact, written several children's stories (in prose) that
> would be good to translate. My own introduction to Silverstein came
> through Esperanto translations of "The Giving Tree" and "The Missing
> Piece"

Shel Silverstein's poetry is very visual.
I Think that in translation the value of
word pictures is, at least for me, very
important perhaps even more than a
fancy rhyme or meter.

> [...] In translating poetry, one must pay attention both to (a) meaning and
> (b) form, whereas with prose translations you only have to worry
> about (a). (*) Obviously, this creates an additional problem for
> poetry, which many modern "poets" will also ignore. I remember
> noticing Jay's translation of
> Grandma sent the hammock
> as
> Ava inviava le hamaca
> The original is in, I believe, trocheic tetrameter (I think this is
> the correct term for three consecutive trochees); Jay has translated
> it as trocheic pentameter (but I suspect that the stress on "in-" in
> "inviava" (**) is not enough to make this second piece a real trochee
> in the sense that "sent the" is). So, to use a term I've used before,
> what we have is not a translation of a poem but simply a prose
> translation exercise, with line breaks added to match those in the
> original poem.
> Best stick with prose, for the purposes of this list.

Poetry has an added value, it brings
artistic flair to the translation process.

I chose "áva Inviáva" for the sound
repetitiveness quality, rather than
say go with "granmatre inviava".
Others are free to translate the
words as they wish, I hope my
choices were artistically pleasing,
as my abilities could muster the
flair needed, alas I'm not a professional
poet. But I love poetry, especially visual
poetry that for me is very vivid, I find
Shel Silverstein's poetry to be just like
that, visual in a very entertaining way.
There must be easier poetry to translate
and there must be harder poems still,
but I hope that in suggesting we try out
some poetic lines we add a higher test
of an auxlang's use by humans.
Somehow artificiality in auxlangs
reminds me rather of robots and
automatons. I feel that poetry can
bring a human perspective to words.
Prose, so much prose today is just
a series of steps and guidelines,
specs and regulations, while poetry
brings a vividness and a rainbow of
colors to our discussion, que no?

With regards,
Jay B.




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Auxilingua Project
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