This French poet I've been reading, his name is Baudelaire and he's like a musician of the French language. His poems feel like they've been written to be read aloud and Baudelaire's words feel like waves coming off of your tongue. Memorizing his poetry is chanting it over and over, working into a kind of harmony. Can the 'waves of a poem' be translated into another language?
Words hold the culture of a language and the memories of a people behind them. Word for word translation, passing meaning from one language to another, is impossible. For instance, in French, they have like eight different words describing different layers of darkness. And using the French words vous or tu (both meaning you. Vous is the formal 'you' and tu is the kind of 'you' used to address a lover or a child) reveal the relationship between two people. How do you capture these kinds of nuances in English?
So really, translation is finding a substitute for a word. My French teacher was saying how poems are musical, but more people are drawn to music, because music is more easily understood. In a song, the music of the song is a reference point, the music tips you off on whether the song is sad or happy. Poetry doesn't have this reference points, which makes poetic translation even more dangerous. The poem is translated through what the translator sees. The 'reference points' of the translator are the translator's knowledge of the history and culture of the language, and the translator's knowledge of the poet he's translating.
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