Translating Poetry

I grew up surrounded by Chinese culture, which inevitably included thorough references to Chinese poems, which (unsurprisingly) were written in Chinese (in case it wasn't clear, I'm Chinese). I think I've always considered the worlds of Chinese poetry and English poetry separate from one another, not just because they're divided by the sounds and words that form their structure and body but also because they've existed in different spheres of life for me. 

But just like international and domestic politics, non-English and English poetry are connected in innumerable ways, interweaved through intertextuality, structure, and rhythm, even if they often can, are, and should be reviewed in different lights. Non-English poetry isn't as accessible to us because, simply put, we can't read the words that constitute the poem.

However, some poems contain translations, most often accomplished by other poets or amateur students but sometimes created by the original poet themselves. With translators who can't possibly understand the intricacy of the original poet's mind, does translation preserve the original fabric of the poem?

No.

Sure, you could argue that poetry is, at its bare bones, sounds and ideas, and theoretically, one could transfer those skeletons into another language, but something still gets lost. Often, it's impossible to preserve both the original rhyme scheme and rhythm as well as the original ideas, but even in the extraordinarily rare case where a translator is able to capture both of these in another language, there's still something that doesn't match up with the original poem. Essences and hints of creativity that get lost of translation. But, does this mean that the translated poems aren't good?

No.

Sure, lots of translated poetry (including the very rough translation of 靜夜思 from my elementary school Chinese class) is less than favorable, but there do exist translations of poetry out there that are incredible. In these cases, I've noticed, translators spend less effort attempting to keep the bare foundations of the poem like the exact words and sentence structures, and instead focus on maintaining some of the original ideas, often expressing them through different idioms or varied sentence structures that carry more beauty in the second language. In these cases, translated poems can come to life, taking a shape of their own and showing off the translator's own skill. When I went through Cathy Park Hong's poetry for my Mentor Poet Project, I was a little surprised to see a "translations" section, and though I originally believed that people had translated her poetry into other languages, it turned out that Hong had translated poetry herself. 

Good translated poetry requires good poets — a good poet to write the original poem and a good poet to write a new adaptation of the poem.