Poetry Is What Gets Lost In Translation Analysis

Poetry is considered one of the most challenging literary genre to translate. American poet Robert Frost argues that “poetry is what gets lost in translation," (qtd. in Gentzler 27) which is agreed by many others. Many scholars even denied that possibility for poetry to be translated into other languages, namely its untranslatability. Translatability is “the capacity for some kind of meaning to be transferred from one language to another without undergoing radical change.” (Baker & Malmkjær 273) It is the feature of being considered translatable, while untranslatability is the condition of not being able to be translated. Translatable elements include “words or expressions for which close equivalents can be found in the target language [and
Poetry is hard to translate or even to read because it explores the poets’ personality and emotions. English poet William Wordsworth describes poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Sarker 411) which may be lost in translation if the translators fail to comprehend the sentimental aspects of them. The overall tone in《月下獨酌》gives off a lonesome atmosphere, with the poet drinking wine all by himself while imagining the moon and shadow as friends. However in “Three with the Moon and his Shadow”, the lines “And see, there goes my shadow before me. Hoo! We’re a party of three” (Li & Obata 85) deliver an interactive tone and cheerful aura, damaging the desolate feeling and charm of the original
Translating poetry may be challenging, but definitely not impossible, or untranslatable. Translation is evolving, we see better translations of the same works as time passes. Many argues that the translations of poetry can never be perfect. Then again, what is a perfect translation? Poet-translator Giovanni Raboni says, translating a literary text is something "totally impossible, from a conceptual point of view” since "it is absolutely, obviously, categorically impossible to be faithful to everything." (Blakesley 117) Novelist Adam Thirlwell goes explains that “[s]omething is still translatable, even if its translation is not perfect.” (Thirlwell 9) Chinese scholar Ma jianzhong (馬建忠) declared in the book《擬設翻譯書院議》that “夫而後，能使閱者所得之益，與觀原文無異。是則為善譯。[a good translation is when reading the translated text in target language, the reader can receive the same effect and benefits as if he is reading the source text]” (qtd. in Peng) If the translation can evoke readers’ feelings and thoughts as if they are reading the original poem, the “untranslatable” components should not be