24 August 2004. Some poets have had fun assuming poems in foreign languages are badly spelled poems in English, and correcting them. Here's one by Issa in Japanese from the issue of Modern Haiku I've been using for most of my recent catch-up entries:

                                     ware to kite
                                     asoibeya oya no
                                     nai suzume

                                     wary Tokyo
                                     as I obey or not
                                     nail summer
  

                                     Tokyo wears
                                     as I obey or not
                                     nail summer

 


   The term for this kind of transformation
   from one language to another is "surface
   translation." There are other terms for it,
   including Joel Lipman's "translitic."

   Geof


                                              

           
               Thanks for the info, Geof.  I know John M.
               Bennett, who does a lot of this kind of thing,
               has a term that makes sense to me but I can't
               remember it.  I like "translitic."  I s'pose 
               "surface translation" is okay--but that suggest
               to me a kind of very literal/accurate translation
               of a poem that misses the subtleties rather than.  
               what it actually it, a mis-non-translation.

                                                   --Bob


 

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