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I love how this site immediately confronts you with the differences between translations, which quickly reveals how much skill and creativity can be in the tran

I love how this site immediately confronts you with the differences between translations, which quickly reveals how much skill and creativity can be in the translations themselves. Especially for poetry, a good translation is not just an imperfect copy, it's an artistic work where the authorship is shared between the original author and the translator. I'm sure Baudelaire himself would have a few things to say on the topic. His translations of Edgar Allan Poe's works are notorious examples of art in translation. If you've got the French level, they are very much worth reading even if you've read the originals.

contctlink 1y ago
I never read it in English, gotta compare the French & English version.
cannam 1y ago
In 1968 a British newspaper ran a competition for English translations of "Spleen - Je suis comme le roi..." The poet Nicholas Moore - motivated by a belief that translating poetry was impossible and the project futile - sent in 31 different entries, by post, under false names and with varying levels of absurdity. He didn't win. You can find them at https://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/moore_spleen.pdf https://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/moore_spleen.pdf, or in his published Selected Poems, along with an essay (written afterwards) about translation. Worth looking out. (I particularly admire the sarcastic one that begins "I'm like The Winner of The Competition / The one who wrote the strong, rewarding phrase...")