I am intrigued by the whole process of translation, a most remarkable alchemy of words and meanings, and when it comes to the translation of poetry, I find the operation especially bewildering and beguiling. But this is not the place for me to discuss my views on the mechanics of the subject, for in fact I have no such views. I am not a translator. I merely wish to explain that the following poem is the result of a minor experiment I have been planning for a long time, a variant of the ‘Chinese Whispers’ game, performed using an automatic translation program. A poem is written, a poem using fairly obvious imagery, and then the translation game begins. The poem is translated from English into another language, in this case Albanian, then from Albanian into another language, Arabic in fact, and from Arabic into Basque, and so on. Eventually the poem exists in Zulu, and from there it is translated back into English.
Possibly it will no longer sound like a real poem at this stage. But it can be easily adjusted, turned into something resembling a new poem, and presented as a continuation of the original poem. The final poetic work will consist of the original stanza followed by the manipulated stanza. If they enhance each other, so much the better, but if not, nothing much has been lost.
The Transformation The transformation is lengthy but painless, it does not drain us. The way ahead is clear as far as the glowing horizon where the moon has promised to rise. The eyes of the night stare intensely in preparation for blinking thanks to the white eyelid of a belated moon and we grow wise when at last it arrives, saying that the stars belong in sleep and so they do and so do we and finally the change occurs rest ful ly.
This poem was automatically translated between all the following languages:
English – Albanian – Arabic – Basque – Bengali – Czech – Dutch – French – German – Greek – Hindi -Indonesian – Korean – Latin – Macedonian – Maltese – Nepali – Persian – Portuguese – Romanian – Sanskrit – Slovak – Swahili – Thai – Turkish – Urdu – Vietnamese – Welsh – Zulu – English
And the result, after a very small manual adjustment, is:
After a long time I’m still crying, a street name outside of us. This is obvious at first: bright horizon. Where is the moon? And so ends the contract. Dinner? I can’t wait to get ready. This is not a rumour of white hair or months. Finally we bring you a sage. They started talking, you are sleeping, and so I continue to do so. Be careful, what’s up is silence, targeted from where?
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.
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