What smart, useful things are being said about translation here! I'd like to add that what I'm finding a serious challenge is the translation of tone, the invisible "facial expression" you imagine on the poet's face as you picture him speakiing his poem to you. I've been trying to get some Frost poems into Spanish, and have been stumped by the dry humor that I now requires the verbal equivalent of a twinkle in the eye. There's so much dead-pan humor, so much deliberate ambiguity that almost amounts to malice!
I've done "The Silken Tent," which I expected would be wicked, and it wasn't half as much trouble as "Mending Wall," which doesn't even have rhyme to worry about! That long, silken, single-sentence sonnet was easier to convey in Spanish than the "New Hampshirese" of Frost's fence-maker haggling with his neighbor over why they do or don't need a fence at all, which is a matter of tone. That surprised me.
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