VERSE TRANSLATION
A working knowledge of some foreign language--say French or German--is
often very profitable to the verse maker. With a dictionary and a couple
of text books he can make very good translations of the poetry of the
language--work which may not bring a money return but which as an
exercise is both interesting and valuable. The process is not
complicated, though a good verse translation may be made as hard a task
as any falling to the lot of the literary worker.
Take a poem that strikes the fancy; read it and reread till every word
is clear and then shape the translation into a stanza and meter as near
the original as possible. If there are four three-line stanzas in the
original, build the translation into four three-line stanzas as closely
line for line as the ease of the verse will permit. In translating from
the German the original meter can be followed accent for accent, though
this is impossible with the French, whose syllables are without
emphasis, and would scarcely be advisable with any of the more
complicated Latin meters.
At first it is a good idea to make the English verse rigorously exact in
its meaning--to study every word until the verse not only rhymes and
runs with some degree of naturalness, but also is a correct rendering of
the cold facts. This is not so hard as it seems if one sits down and
thinks the right word out, and it gives opportunity for an excellent
overhauling of the vocabulary.
Any one who has had a high-school course in Latin can experiment with
Virgil, turning it either into couplets like Pope's Iliad or into the
more appropriate meter used by Longfellow in his Evangeline. With a
dictionary and a literal translation it is easy enough to puzzle out
Horace, who is more modern in his thought and who is, in a way, the
ancestor of our present _vers-de-societe_ writers. There is also this
advantage in the translation of Horace: One finds a chance to compare
his translation with the work of many others, for Horace has been more
widely translated than any other poet unless we except the Biblical
writers. The fame of Father Prout rests largely on his renderings of
Horace. Austin Dobson has translated several of the odes into the French
forms and many other poets have turned their hand to the task.
Among the Germans, Heine is a favorite with English translators, though
many of his songs from their shortness and delicacy are hard to express
properly. Goethe and Schiller have also been much translated and any
collection of German poetry will show a dozen poems with which one has
become familiar through the English versions.
Among the French it is difficult to specify any particular authors, as
they have not been so widely translated as the Germans. Alfred de
Musset, Theophile Gautier and Paul Verlaine are, perhaps, as well known
as any other of the more modern writers.
In making translations with a view to the artistic side the result is
apt to differ from the exercise which aims only at accuracy. For
practice one should render line for line as nearly as possible. When one
can do this it is allowable to take more liberties and reproduce the
poem, not line for line as it stands, but rather as the author might
have written it had he composed in English; to preserve the meter and
general arrangement but to sacrifice details when necessary to the
spirit of the poem. When the two qualities can be combined and a poem is
translated in such a way that the lines correspond and yet do not crowd
out the poetry the result is a masterpiece. But such things very rarely
happen and require not only hard work but a flash of inspiration and
good luck as well.
Very often a poem can be imitated from its mother tongue. A stanza or
two may be expanded into a ballade in English containing an elaboration
of the original thought. It is perfectly allowable to offer a
composition of this sort for sale provided the source is acknowledged.
XI
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