“Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.”

—- Yevgeny Yevtushenko

The quote above is from Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, author of Babi Yar and known critic of the Soviet government. While this quotation is undeniably misogynistic, it does present an interesting point of view and reality of translations.

While translators generally focus on producing a translation  that is faithful to the original, what does one do when translating poetry, when portraying a feeling, a mood, is more important than meaning? How much creative freedom is granted to the translator?

Poetry is so nuanced, so particular, that it could be likened to recreating a piano sonata on a bass drum. The result may be interesting and may have a certain style to it, but it will never produce the same feeling as the original.

To avoid  falling into the trap of a literal translation (an exceedingly strict adherence to the source text’s composition and grammatical structure), which is justifiable only in some isolated cases, we generally use a variety of methods. These are almost always done automatically, without knowing which approach we are using or what it is called. These strategies, which are quite useful when we cannot find the perfect structure to match the original, are:
ADAPTATION: a cultural or social element from the original text is replaced with a different, but corresponding element in the translation. This is usually something that is more familiar to the intended audience. This is valuable when translating poetry, plays and advertising.
LOAN: this is an untranslated word from the original language (usually written in italics). Examples: fiesta, loco.
CALQUE: is the creation of a neologism with the source language’s structure. Example: fútbol, a word created from the English “football.”
MODULATION: the message’s form is altered by a change in perspective or semantics. A phrase’s angle is adjusted so that it sounds better in the target language:
•    Original in English: It is not difficult to show.
•    Literal Spanish translation: No es difícil de demostrar.
•    Modulated Spanish translation: Es fácil de demostrar.
TRANSPOSITIONING: changing one part of speech for another without changing the meaning of the message.
•    Original in English: After he comes back.
•    Literal Spanish translation: Después de que él regrese.
•    Transposed Spanish translation: Después de su regreso.
EQUIVALENCY: using a word whose meaning is a synonym of another word in the source.

If there is one thing that almost all translators can agree upon, it’s that two of the most things to translate, no matter what the language, are jokes and poetry. Jokes, because they usually have a play on words or phrases with a “double meaning” that are practically impossible to transfer from one language to another.

Take this English one-liner for example:

“Did you hear about the guy whose whole left side was cut off? He’s all right now.”

One possible translation would be: “¿Te enteraste de ese chico al que le cortaron todo el lado izquierdo? Ahora está bien.” It would be technically correct, understandable, but missing the punch line. The joke works in English because “right” here means “bien” and “derecho.” Maybe you could make a play on words with “derecho” in the sense of “recto,” or maybe in the sense of laws… Eventually, and with a good bit of work, a good translator could get some kind of humor out of it.  But it would never be the same joke.

And poetry holds even greater challenges, even if it the original does not rhyme or you decide not to try and make the translation rhyme, it still involves meter, cadence, and rhythm that tend to be most difficult to translate. If it’s not a translation, you’re writing a new poem… A poem is a unique combination of special words- and not others– that are also laid out in a unique arrangement. How does one do that? So then, does everyone need to learn the original language in order to read the poem? Exactly how many languages do we need to learn? Right.
Every language has its own ways to twist words around, its own double meanings and plays on words. It’s not exactly vital to translate jokes since every country or region has its own style of humor. But for poetry, I feel that we translators don’t have a choice. we wouldn’t have access to Russian poetry, Greek classics, Latin sonnets, or Japanese haikus if a translator hadn’t first taken on the task of translating them. And although it may not turn out “perfect,” I think we should keep trying…