Bonjour Paris has been running a series in which a translator discusses her translation of a poem, with some connection (however tenuous) to being on lockdown while translating it.
In
the latest installment (the sixth), the translator justifies leaving the two-line refrain of a famous poem untranslated, by saying that it's hard, and others have done it badly, and anyway, it contains English cognates that non-French-speakers should be able to figure out for themselves.
Hmmm. How do others feel about that? I think that sometimes leaving things untranslated works, but here, it feels like a
faux-fuyant.
(Also feel free to discuss anything else about this essay/translation series in this thread. The others are accessible via the above link, too.)
Translation discussions in Bonjour Paris
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