poetry - How can I translate my poems in English that it doesn't sound odd/non poetic for English speaker audiences?

There are many translated Persian/Farsi poems in English like The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam, the famous Iranian poet, philosopher, and mathematician, translated by Edward FitzGerald. Unfortunately these kinds of translations were shallow and couldn't properly convey the deep meaning or purpose of poet to audiences, which can damage a poem or diminish its value. There are many English speaking audiences who enjoy reading the translated versions of Khayyam's Rubaiyat, but us Iranians can find how much these translations are wrong and even off topic!

Is there any special method/source or institute to guide poets who want translate their own poems into English, and how can you find your audiences' ideas about your translation are correct and professional?

Answer

A special method? No. There surely are guides, but I doubt their value.

Poetic translation is one of the most difficult tasks of the writer craft (and probably the most difficult of the more common ones) often topping writing original poetry in means of difficulty. A guide or resource may help, but you need very, very much talent and perform a painstakingly difficult work to get it right - sometimes getting it right will be impossible.

My first advice is to pick a common poem that has at least three different translations and see how they differ and tackle the problems.

Think what sacrifices you are willing to make. Keeping the meter of the original, number of lines, and direct relation line-to-line will be possible only in the simplest, child-level poetry. In serious poetry you will have to reorder some lines at the very least. Quite often phrases will be a whole strophe away from their original location, but sometimes you'll change the rhyming scheme or the meter, and use considerably different forms.

In essence, you don't translate. You write the poem from scratch, trying to retain the original message and spirit. Don't try to translate it word-for-word or sentence-for-sentence. Start with taking the deepest meanings, the mood, the message, the impact of the original - things that made the original a worthy piece of art and not just a piece of rhyming text. Think which metaphors of the original translate well into the foreign language and try to save them, work them into the new text - but if the metaphor is unclear, say, because the English word carries different emotional connotations, replace it with something that works better. If there are puns, or thoughts dependent on double meaning of words, that just don't translate, don't hesitate to replace them with comparisons, replace the one word with two where they convey both meanings. And never hesitate to add your own if it works well - sometimes the translation can improve upon the original, as the target language may have expressions that describe given things even better than author's native language.

Try to keep the same style. If the original uses flourishing extensive comparisons, use these. If the original is very dry and skimping on stylistic forms, skimp on stylistic forms. If the original is a sonnet, you must make your translation into a sonnet. If the original is dactylic hexameter, you don't really need to keep the translation a dactylic hexameter - pick dactylic pentameter or iambic hexameter, something of similar "stature"; translation of ancient epic poetry into iambic tetrameter would be quite inappropriate. The content may be significantly different, but not only the message but also the style - the language, the form should be as similar to the original as you can make it.

Note there are various words that have different connotations in different languages. An item that is the symbol of royalty in one language may be a symbol of laziness in other. If you translate the noun directly, you will lose the original meaning. Don't. Sacrifice factual adherence to literal meaning, to retain the symbolic meaning. Use a different symbol that has the same meaning rather than the same symbol that translated has a different meaning. Say, the direct translation of given character's role is "witch", but her role is more of a shamaness, a person of deep wisdom and good will. Call her "Priestess" and discard the loaded "Witch" and unenlightened "Shamaness" altogether.

Then, in the end, give it rhythm and make it rhyme.

In short, what you must retain, translate and keep in the translation, in order from the most important to the least important:

1. Deep meaning.


2. Mood.


3. Form/Style.


4. Objects, subjects and events.


5. Rhythm, meter.


6. Metaphors, double meanings, poetic expressions.


7. Sequence, ordering.


8. Rhymes.

I found working with both a thesaurus and an online rhyme dictionary helps immensely. Also, trying to stick to the same metaphors gets you stuck. Try to find a better metaphor, a different form that says a similar thing better, rather than trying to repeat the old one word for word and lose the meaning or break the meter in the process. Don't try to translate - write a new poem that tells the same thing.