Miscellaneous French Verse Translations

When translating verse, I think one should try to capture both the form (meter, line positions, rhyme scheme, etc.) and substance to the extent possible and to the extent not cumbersome* in the new language.  "To the extent possible" can require much work that I think is often missing from much translation.  I also think the original should be printed on the opposing page so the reader can judge the success for herself. 

 

*Where end stopping or alexandrines, for example, seem cumbersome in English, I would think the original poet would want substitutes that distract less in English. Thus I've often used iambic pentameter in lieu of hexameter.  I've also often avoided end stopping where that seemed a distraction (my translation of Phaedre for example).

Here are the English pages of some of my dabblings along these lines.  I think the Veraline & Du Bellay present especially hard challenges and I keep tweaking......

 

I.  Verlaine: MacIntyre claimed: “No one has ever translated, or can or will translate [Chanson d'automne]; yet it offers the supreme challenge, the shifting lure of the bright impossible.” Maybe MacIntyre didn’t try hard enough?

Verse Translation: A Call for Harder Work and Greater Care

Too much verse translation is too free and loose.  We must take the time and effort to preserve both meaning AND form (including meter and rhyme where they exist) without sacrificing one for the other.  Though we can never fully translate verse from one language to another, we can come close if we’re willing to work hard enough.  To illustrate this, I want to give some French to English examples of my own.  I don’t claim they are perfect by any means but I think they make my point.  I ask the reader to pull the original French texts and compare them with what I have done.  I break my examples into seven parts (I-VII).