Translation with music and tea is name of this picture.
© sms:foto duisburg/rhein 2011
The process of translation.
We first speak to the auhors, propose a choice of their work or let them choose what they would like to see in a trilingual book. Then I start working. If I know the poet/ess, or the work of the poet/ess it is easier. I get what they are trying to do, understand the images and feel where they are going in the poems. it is harder to translate for an anthology, because then one works with only a few poems per author. The real joy is in sending a translation, waiting for the remarks, mulling them over and finally sit together and reading the poems and their translation out loud in all the languages . The reading out loud is essential in poetry, one hears the inflection of the voice of the author, the pause, the parts stressed and so sometimes one discovers an extra nuance one hadn't spotted before. So in close cooperation the best possible text emerges.
Read: Poetry is...
