Translation as composition, is reading work in two languages side by side a craft practice - has anyone done this

[PlanetOftheApes]

I have been reading Zurita with the Deeny Morales translation on facing pages for about six weeks now and it has changed how I think about line breaks. Reading the same poem twice in two languages, watching where the translator has to break differently, watching the choices being negotiated in real time, is one of the better craft lessons I have had in a long time.

This is not a new idea, but it is one that working poets without language training do not access enough. You do not have to read Spanish to learn from a parallel text edition. You can read what the line does in Spanish visually and ask why the English version made the choice it made. Then go to a third translation if there is one. The choices stack and the original starts to feel like a moving target rather than a fixed text.

Favourite parallel text editions I have been working through this year, the Sappho selections from Anne Carson, the Lorca New Directions, the Vallejo Eshleman, and anything by Forrest Gander. Curious what other people use

[ProperJobs]

The Eshleman Vallejo is the touchstone for me, the introduction alone is a craft book

[CosmicRay40]

Reading Zurita with Deeny Morales is exactly how I learned the most about white space in the last five years

[IronFist66]

Anne Carson's If Not Winter is the gold standard for how translation can be its own composition

[GhostRider]

Yeah that is about right. Legend.

[Compass]

Don Mee Choi's translations of Kim Hyesoon are doing something different but related, she is composing into English rather than out of Korean

[Ellie22]

Forrest Gander recommendation seconded hard, his work on Pizarnik in particular

[IvoryOttie]

Stop, what about Ilan Stavans translations, has anyone been reading him

[Daemon82]

Stavans is good but more academic in feel than what we are talking about here

[GhostRider]

Genuine question, can you really learn from a translation if you do not read the source language at all

[Arty Leah]

Yes, you learn what a competent translator does with a constraint, which is itself a craft lesson regardless of source

[BretHart]

Disagree slightly, you learn what the translator does but you do not know what they could have done that they did not

[error.404]

Both are right, the parallel reading is incomplete but still more useful than nothing