Distant Voices


There are already several excellent sources of poetry on the Net. However, almost all of these deal with either a particular poet or with poems from one particular language. Having been moved by the original verses from several different languages, I wanted to share them with my friends, but found, to my disappointment, that most lacked satisfying translations.

Now, I subscribe neither to the literalist theory of translation, one that assumes a poem is reified on the page, nor to the Crocean notion that poetry is untranslatable. Nevertheless it remains true that most of the English translations that I have encountered are abysmally unsuccessful in capturing the spirit, the emotion and imagery, of the originals.

This page is an attempt to collect translations, transcreations, or imitations (and in the case of English, simply some personal favourites) that, in my opinion, succeed at their task: being able to draw from their reader the same response that the originals do. As such, the number of poems on this page is quite low. I would appreciate receiving e-mail suggestions for further additions.


Arabic

Bengali

Chinese

English

German

Greek (Ancient)

Greek (Modern)

Hebrew

Japanese

Persian

Russian

Spanish

Turkish

Urdu


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Revised: July 15, 2007