Today is National Poetry Day in the U.K. (admittedly I don’t live in the U.K. but I’m sure they don’t mind a little borrowing!). My high school French teacher was a real poetry buff, and when I was in 11th grade we each had to pick a French poem to translate and read to the class. I picked Guillaume Apollinaire’s Le pont Mirabeau, which is set on the Mirabeau Bridge over the Seine in Paris. I can’t even imagine what I wrote; whatever it was I’m sure it made Apollinaire roll in his grave, but I do still remember how long I worked on the translation and how much I loved doing it. I think that my career destiny was definitely sealed when, a year later, some high school friends and I went to Paris with that same teacher and read “Le pont Mirabeau” in French and English while standing on the Mirabeau Bridge!
Of course I now realize that translating poetry has to be one of the hardest tasks a translator can undertake. In the absence of whatever horrors I inflicted on Apollinaire’s work, here are some better translations: one by the folk/rock group The Pogues and one by U.S. Poet Laureate emeritus Richard Wilbur.
Agreed — I think translating poetry is the Holy Grail of translation. It would scare me to have this tremendous responsibility for great works for art. Imagine, it would be in print forever for eternal scrutiny by fellow writers/translators/poets. Just the thought of it, even though I am a great literature lover, deters me. My hat is off to poetry translators. I would, however, really enjoy getting into fiction translation. Great story about the bridge, Paris, and French!