(Gerard Ter Bosch, detail)

While I have occasionally worked professionally as a translator, mostly of business and legal documents, I've always been especially challenged by the problem of translating poetry. In fact the problems plural: those involved in getting the sense of the poem, in finding words and phrases that try to convey the flavour and connotations of the text, and finally those of attempting to match the meter and rhyme scheme - if any. In the examples given in this section, I have sometimes given up on matching rhyme and occasionally on matching meter - but only, I hope temporarily.

Matching rhyme is sometimes simply impossible, since English is much poorer in rhyming words than the Latin languages, largely because of the way verbs are conjugated and nouns and adjectives declined. It is easier from German and Russian.
Exactly matching meter is sometimes the wrong answer. Hexameters in Latin and alexandrines in French are the standard ways of writing epic and dramatic verse, and matched in English they must sound alien. The English equivalent is blank verse: sometimes therefore that is the way I match them.
Similarly English, like German and Russian, derives its rhythmic effect from stress. Latin (and Greek - though I haven't tried any Greek) derive it from vowel quantity, and modern French - a rather monotonic language to the English ear - depends on syllable count. Since vowel quantity is meaningless to the English ear (and dialects vary so widely) I never attempt to match it, substituting stress. French depends on the way I feel at the time.
Sometimes too a totally different verse form may match the feeling of the original best - see the translations of Goethe's Wandrers Nachtlied. I'd welcome any comments you might like to make: click on the e-mail button below.