To translate a poem

Today comes very close to a 10 on the scale of delightful May days. The wild plum and some other bushes are in bloom. Roadsides and some pastures are full of dandelions in flower. On the drive to pick up today's CSA share we glimpsed what we think was a golden eagle. It was the kind of morning and journey to be captured in a poem, perhaps a haiku. (I've recently returned to reading more on wabi sabi, zen, and haiku.) Words and paintings and music are about all we have to capture special moments and feelings. To translate them into something that can be shared with others. Then again, Robert Frost has been quoted as saying "Poetry is what gets lost in translation." Ursula Le Guin has a more nuanced perspective:

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat… where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.

Alternatively, in the highly enjoyable A Hundred White Daffodils, Jane Kenyon writes, on her translations of Anna Akhmatova's poems:

...Because it is impossible to translate with fidelity to form and to image, I have sacrificed form for image. Image embodies feeling, and this embodiment is perhaps the greatest treasure of lyric poetry. In translating, I mean to place the integrity of the image over all other considerations.

Over the past week or so, I've discovered we have three different translations of one of Bashō's most famous haiku. The variations and their sources are provided below. I think they illustrate quite well the significance changing a few words, or their arrangement, can have in translating an experience. or capturing an image. After reading the translations below (it won't take long) think about whether you have a preference for one particular version; consider if you lean more toward Frost's or Le Guin's perspective on translation (although without being able to read the original, I've no idea how to judge what may be lost). I find that one version feels to me much more poetical (haiku-ish?) than the other two. There's one image that works best for me. What about you?

could this be Bashō's "old pond?"

Photo by J. Harrington

The Haiku Handbook, How to Write, Teach, and Appreciate Haiku
William J. Higginson and Penny Harter

old pond…
a frog leaps in
water's sound

The Sound of Water, Haiku by Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets
Translated by Sam Hamill

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water

Haiku, Classic Japanese Short Poems
Introduction written and poems translated by Hart Larrabee

An old pond—
the splash of
plunging frogs

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