I’m happy to inform you that I’m working on an English rendition of my Greek poetry collection stages of unrequited Love!
From translation to rendition
The Greek original collection contains 50 poems, and I’m approaching the English version one poem at a time. The format and original illustrations will remain unchanged, allowing me to focus entirely on bringing the poems into English.
At first, I thought of this simply as a translation. But poetry doesn’t always translate neatly from one language to another. A literal rendering may preserve the meaning while losing the rhythm, sound, wordplay, or emotional character of the original.
So perhaps rendition is the better word.
The challenge
There are many things to consider during the translation of poetry! For example, should we preserve the rhyme or the metre of the original poems? And would it be more important to preserve those at the likely expense of the original meaning?
My aim is not to reproduce every Greek word as closely as possible, but to create English poems that remain faithful to what the originals are saying and feeling, even when that requires changing their wording, rhythm, rhyme, or sound.
There is no single rule for making these choices. For each poem, I’m trying to balance the trade-off that best preserves the character of the original, yet in another language with its own idiosyncrasies.
The first poem as an example
The following translated poem is an example of this trade-off: making the least changes to the meaning in order to preserve the rhytmic and homophonic character of the Greek version.
| 1.1. επαναλήψεις | 1.1. rerun |
|---|---|
| ό,τι μου ‘ρθει θα το γράψω κι ό,τι γράψαν θα το κάψω γιατί θάμπωσε το φως μας απ’ τα «πρέπει», απ’ τα «πώς» μας κι από ‘κείνα τα «γιατί;» είσαι Εκείνη ή Αυτή; να, θαμπώνει κι ο καθρέφτης ο καλύτερός μας κλέφτης και η Μοίρα και το Δίκιο π’ όλα γίναν ως το Λύκειο κι από τότε επαναλήψεις μα σε προβολή μη λείψεις | whatever comes to mind, I'll write and what they wrote, I'll burn on sight because our vision has been blurred by every “must” and “how” heard and by all those times asking “why” is Her or She who’s coming by? here, now the mirror's also blurred our best thief and our next best friend and blurry appear the Right and Fate as all were lived till that first date and thenceforth watching their rerun but don’t you miss the show if you can |
Best regards,
Danis