Wednesday, February 23, 2005

 

I've run into a bit of a problem with my old tactic of making homophonic translations of poems in Portuguese as a way to generate language for new poems. After doing this for over a year, I find I now can actually read Portuguese. Like so. I took this poem:

Quero um erro de gramatica que refaca
na metade luminosa o poema do mundo,
e que Deus mantenha oculto na metade nocturna
o erro do erro:
alta voltagem do ouro,
bafo no rosto.


And homophonically translated it as this:

I want a new type of grammatical error: one that resurfaces
In luminous metal the poem, the world,
The God that secretly maintains, in half-darkness,
Error upon error,
Conducive gold to cover
The broken and ultimate Word.


Then I looked at an English translation of the poem by people who actually purport to know both Portuguese and English:

I'd like a grammatical error to rewrite
the poem of the world on the side of daylight
while God hides the error of the error
on the dark side --
high-voltage gold,
breath in the face.


Not quite the same, but too close for comfort. I must move on to using poems in a stranger language.

UPDATE: A short test has confirmed that I remain utterly unable to correctly translate anything in Ukrainian. Hooray for Ukraine!

posted by Reen |link| 0 comments

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