Ph: Poetry Writing: Week 2: Brian's Poet Of Note - ‘ Herman Hesse' Comments

This week I thought I would discuss translating poetry from another language. I just finished retranslating from German this poem ‘Stufen' from Hesse's famous novel ‘The Glass Bead Game') but it has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I first translated it 50 years ago when I was studying German in college, but I have misplaced the earlier translation. So today I include the original version of Hesse's poem in German as well for those who can read German or those who want to compare my translation to the original German.

There are different ways to translate a poem if this is something new to you.1. The simplest way is a word for literal word translation. And these are interesting in themselves I think but suffer from the fact that the word the poet chooses may not always be the best word in expressing the poet's intent. For example, an idiom in German might sound funny translated into English, but there might be an expression in English that is the German equivalent, but which uses very different words.2. Some translations skip rhythm and rhyme altogether but try to communicate the translators 'understanding' of the poem using often very different words.3. And finally, some translations will make an effort to preserve the structure and even the rhythm and rhyme pattern as well. It is not easy to do this and to also use most of the poet's original words!
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