Comments on: Better Translations, Part II http://www.pathawi.net/b-log/2005/04/27/better-translations-part-ii/ Pensaments of an Anthropological Patzer Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:02:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: NotSoMuch http://www.pathawi.net/b-log/2005/04/27/better-translations-part-ii/#comment-61 NotSoMuch Sat, 26 Nov 2005 15:53:40 +0000 http://www.pathawi.net/b-log/2005/04/27/better-translations-part-ii/#comment-61 When you are accustomed to rhythm in speech but not rhyme (as we are when we talk English) ... rhyme sounds weird and phoney. It makes us laugh out loud. The really great poets find end rhyme in everyday speech patterns and I read one of those poems and am surprised to hear someone tell me it is a rhyming poem after I read it. I go back and examine with an academic eye and see it is. But it flowed when I read it. I did not get stopped by the endrhyme. That is what Qabbani and his ilk do in their own languages. If to get it to do the same thing in this language we forego endrhyme it is the better translation. I don't want to be stopped by poetic devices to say be hit over the head until I say, "yeah yeah. I see what he was doing there and I see how he was doing it ... now can I move on to read the second line of this 50 line opus?" When you are accustomed to rhythm in speech but not rhyme (as we are when we talk English) … rhyme sounds weird and phoney. It makes us laugh out loud. The really great poets find end rhyme in everyday speech patterns and I read one of those poems and am surprised to hear someone tell me it is a rhyming poem after I read it. I go back and examine with an academic eye and see it is. But it flowed when I read it. I did not get stopped by the endrhyme. That is what Qabbani and his ilk do in their own languages. If to get it to do the same thing in this language we forego endrhyme it is the better translation. I don’t want to be stopped by poetic devices to say be hit over the head until I say, “yeah yeah. I see what he was doing there and I see how he was doing it … now can I move on to read the second line of this 50 line opus?”

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