Can Poetry Be Translated?
Where imperfect translations are blamed on our lapses of language, Aaron Coleman sees "creative, productive failures." Allow the poet and literary translator to explain with a few tweet-length poems.
Is it possible to translate poetry from one language into another without losing meaning?
To paraphrase Robert Frost — not really. "Poetry is what gets lost in translation," the American poet is often quoted as saying. In other words, the meaning the reader extracts from a poem can never be a replica of the writer's intent.
Then again, I'm
