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Unread 05-08-2014, 01:26 PM
Mark Blaeuer Mark Blaeuer is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Arkansas, USA
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Martin,

I’m tempted to say: follow Kryl’s lead—but it may depend on what you want to do with your translation. Are you only interested in singing it at poetry readings? Or do you want to publish it? Or both? If you have publication in mind, his current publishers and his heirs will need to weigh in, since he only died in 1994; and their points of view won't always be predictable.

What did he do with his German translation?

To your more general question, my opinion is that, once again, the original author’s intentions are most important. Of course, if the author did free verse translations of his/her formal original, you’d obviously have more latitude. At some point, though, a literal translation might be useful in print. Sometimes I think it’d be good if all published translations came with a reliable crib.

Mark
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