Today, poet Michael Leong talks about various ways of translation and the use of found text to create something new, perhaps homophonic translation, taking a piece in another language and translating based on English words that  would sound similar to that word. (Or you might do a sight translation, choosing English words that look rather like the foreign ones.)

He has a few different ideas on how to approach new ways to translate which he discusses on the Found Poetry Review blog.

Michael doesn’t give any direct prompt or instruction, but suggests devising a translation method of your own, or using one already known.  For this prompt, then, I selected a poem from Czechoslovakian poet Miroslav Holub, The Fly, which I encountered in Ten Windows, by Jane Hirshfield. I could not find it in its original language, so I decided to go back to an earlier prompt and run the poem through a variety of translations on Google Translate.

This time I used French, Hungarian, Irish, Esperanto, Latin and back to English.  Once I had the translation done, I also translated the title. My favourite was the Esperanto, which gave me Dumfluge, which sounds very Germanic.  I was also left with a strange new word, carthilagineus, which I decided to leave in because I liked the sound of it!

Unfortunately during the translations the sex of the fly changed, the number fourteen somehow morphed into sixteen, and grammar was rather dumfluge too.  Only fierce cutting would give me something I could work with.  You can read the original poem here

fly on cherry (Wikipedia)

This is my edited poem: 

Flight

Fleeing brown eyes and spread legs together
the immortal bluetongue

Fly was sitting on the horse. She eviscerated
the body, ate part of the eye quickly,
the arms and legs, the veins.

Silence of whisper and destruction
under the trees, she started
to lay eggs on the trunk of the willow

carthilagineus
and falling

female fly (Sarcophaga sp.) \Wikipedia)

Carol A. Stephen
April 19, 2016

The FPR Impromptu challenge for Day 17 comes from poet, Jeff Griffin. Find the full post and more information about Jeff, as well as links to poems by other poets participating here: http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/blog/impromptu-17-jeff-griffin/

Here are the instructions for the prompt itself:

1. Get a book of poetry, preferably a shorter title, one that can be read in about an hour, and one you won’t mind highlighting.
2. Read through it all in one sitting, highlighting all the words, phrases and lines that you find remarkable.
3. When finished, go back to the beginning and transcribe chronologically all the highlighted text into a word processor, but do not include any of the punctuation. Just type up one big run-on sentence text block.
4. Copy and paste your text block into Google Translate. Translate it back and forth between multiple languages at least five times. Then translate back to English. The newly translated/mangled text block will have some semblance to the original language you found remarkable—it’ll be in the same ballpark—but due to what gets lost (or added) in translation, as well as the fact that there is no punctuation for the translator to gauge, it will likely be completely strange, providing unexpected/new/altered/mistranslated words and attempts at sentences.
5. Take this raw material and edit as you see fit until you have formed your poem.

I selected a short book of poetry, Ardour, by Nicole Brossard, translation by Angela Carr. Coach House Books, 2015

Here are the words and phrases, in a single paragraph as instructed.

“in the shadow of the species in the hollows of living languages in the sounding of time today the unnameable humanity in its salty vertigo proficient with knots and ardour the hard pits of  words the colour of silence the alphabets intersected counting the bones the sea’s blue wounds between apparitions before forgetfulness the sea fused with salt there are the missing women who loved olives long sounds from throat all that breathes to forget nothing not afraid of  disappearing the flavours of saffron and salt of numerals and light beyond the barbed wire a myth in each face a sky of questions lives spin  to the sea the silence in light the air is opaque night trembles on the tongue”

Using the translator, I translated into Spanish, then Hungarian, French, German and Italian and finally English again.  Here is what I used as my source text for the poem I created:

the shadow of the species in wells of solar time modern languages now responsible for countless human pieces of dizziness and salt wells in harsh colors flames words still count in alphabetical order blue wounds bone sea
women disappeared between appearances before the molten sea salt from the scene I loved the olive tones, while breathing in the throat a bit ‘scared, do not forget the number of escape aromas saffron and salt and the light is too pungent myth of all aspects of live questions hand sky to the sea, the light the silence of the dark night air chills in the language

I then remixed, setting aside words that I might insert later to produce this poem, with only a handful of words not used at all. The title too comes from the source textL

Myth Aspects of Live Questions

The light is too pungent. Air
chills the shadow of the species

in wells of solar time
modern languages escape

in the language of the sea
countless human pieces.

Dizziness flames, salt wells in harsh colors
words still count in alphabetical order.

Women disappeared between appearances
before the molten sea salt wounds blue bone.

I love the olive tones
breathing in the throat,

do not forget the aromas
of saffron and salt.

The light, the silence of the dark night
hand the sky to the sea.

Salt along the shore of the Dead Sea (Wikipedia)

Carol A. Stephen
April 17, 2016