Pulvers and Beichman

 After reading Eidensticker’s comment on translators being counterfeiters last week, reading about translating poetry feels almost like a complete 180. Pulvers says that the key to capturing and translating poetry from languages that are linguistically unrelated to one another is re-creation—the translated poem has to “be a poem in its own right.” Re-creation is more than counterfeiting; translating a poem is essentially creating a new poem—from another. The statement “Distancing yourself from the syntax of the original may be the way to get closest to that original” is something I would’ve never thought of but looking at Pulvers translation of “Ame ni mo makezu,“ his complete change of word choice and syntax still conveys the intent of the original very powerfully. Similarly, Beichman mentions that when translating poetry, a new spirit must be added so that the poem continues to breathe in another language. The multitude of examples in Beichman’s paper really showed how different syntax, organization, word choices, syllables, could still communicate the original poem well. It was quite fascinating to see how free and wild translators were/could be with the number of lines, syllables, punctuation, spacing and even layout.

Another thing Pulvers notes is that translators should familiarize themselves with the poet’s circumstances/life. I think this is interesting because compared to other types of writing—novels, academic papers, news articles—poets more often draw inspiration for their poems from their life events and surroundings, so knowing the background of the poet can often give some additional insight into the poem. 

 Lesley