This is not homophonic translation: you don’t have to make the exact same sounds (although Zukofsky’s versions of Catullus are a fascinating exercise

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Zukofsky-Catullus-excerpt.html)

Instead, or as well, try to catch the lollop and drive of the original.

Consider, for example, Canto 1 of Ezra Pound. The text is available here

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/241042

but the sound file of someone reading it aloud is underwhelming. Not just compared to Pound reading it

Hear Ezra Pound Read From His “Cantos,” Some of the Great Poetic Works of the 20th Century

You can try the more widely available version on YouTube but notice how the wash of sound from background sea noises spoils the sound of the Pound.

I offer here an ”overwrite for sound” I did 25 years ago. I don’t stand by it now as a successful example of overwrite, but I still like it as a poem. It’s a more literal overwrite in that it also looks at the Canto 1 theme of travel out of your comfort zone and the weird manifestation of signs and wonders.

(What strikes me after 25 years is now well Pound gets at all the details of the journey, like actual sailors talking about it, to the point and effective. One can say the same of Bunting in his passages about sailing in his long poem Briggflatts. What also strikes me is that the poem is not primarily showing its images. It is primarily requiring the reader to enter its world and not be taken surprise by any of the imagery. After that, it’s making a rhythm. It makes me think of the pleasure of friendship, when one hears a friend hit their stride and finally blow off steam. It reminds me of some of Scorsese’s gangland heroes in their intelligent but furious worlds rising to violence. And yet these aren’t the acting out of some inner violence in Pound, to me, nor a wish for violence. They are part of a weirdly disembodied effort to produce a certain kind of sound with words that is radically different from most poetry in English at the time of its publication or since. Knowledgeable, also, about language; taking on, and expecting the currency of, demanding grammatical forms, much as a maths teacher expects numeracy of the class by the end of the school year.

Here’s my poem

Next boarded the jumbo

By a squeezebox gangway, once detached we were off, and

Belts tight, stewards by the hatches, the craft began to feel light

The stewards having wheeled aboard trolleys and activated ovens
And the false start when we rolled to the start of the runway

And got sent back meant the midnight surge

Into the starry sky didn’t happen till two

Which at least bothered me, mind on the threat of return

Leaving New Zealand for a British woman.

Aloft we lost gravity and walked about the aisles

(Pound’s first trip in a plane

Was under arrest from Pisa to Washington,

Olga Rudge said he ran from porthole to porthole

Thrilled as a young boy with flying)

As the plane flew north and east

To ‘the’ West Coast, going with the world-night’s turn from the light.
Most of us slept through the movie

Waking for the drop into dusk at Los Angeles,

Pacing with thigh-cramp while they readied a plane,

Put off by the need for so many quarters

Just to phone forward I’ll be two hours late.

Edge of a city dispersed, heavy traffic;

Glad to leave LA as a sparkling light-display,

Matted on a darkened land

Where it would always be night till the next plane-flight—

As we and the earth went the same way, east,

What we left behind us we found again,

And it was sunny when we landed at Gatwick.

Because she was short I saw her tiny hand waving

Above the shoulders packing Arrivals:

She had waited all day, her excitement

More fresh now than her offered bouquet,

Her blush more replete than the thorough purple

In the stone of the ring I had brought her.

I hauled my case onto the British Rail transit

And she paid for a taxi to home.

In her front room I jabbered
Of the country I’d left, she offered

The foods I had loved when I met her—

Hälfte des Lebens

Mit gelben Birnen hänget
Und voll mit wilden Rosen
Das Land in den See,
Ihr holden Schwäne,
Und trunken von Küssen
Tunkt ihr das Haupt
Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.

Weh mir, wo nehm ich, wenn
Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo
Den Sonnenschein,
Und Schatten der Erde?
Die Mauern stehn
Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde
Klirren die Fahnen.

(Hölderlin)

HALF AND HALF

Yellow pears are the overhang
(stacked with wild roses)
of the land into the lake:
the lovely grown swans
drunk on its kisses
dunk their noggins in
the holyblackcoffee of the water.

Bugger, where’ll I get, when
it’s winter, any blossom, and where
the sun’s shine,
shadows on the ground?
The walls come up
dumb and chilly, in the wind
socks whip.

Deep heart I’m here: words
pour from your core half formed.
I freeze, fearing those shy songs
that scream love, asking me to
sing and dance. Stone deaf
and clumsy too I will break
dreams. I live in a quiet place,
might you come, if only to break bread?
Others
voice their affection delightfully,
sotto voce, in tune, without
obvious dissembling, écoute moi?
Yet you will break your heart as you
determine to ignore the trickling
waters as they break surf
drawing rushes of pebble sound
with the undertow,
upon the shore making tiny waves
whilst you long for storms.

I am so stunned my sweet man,
Get thee away, keep safe now,
I have no love remaining
Nor can I make you stoop low.
Offering you nought will break love
Banish me now and save us.

On reflection the other piece whilst being launched by the original is really incongruent with spirit of the libretto.

(And make a video of you reciting it along to the original…)

I’m not sure if this is what you meant? I took the first verse of the drinking song Chevaliers de la Table Ronde:-

Chevaliers de la Table Ronde
Goûtons voir si le vin est bon
Goûtons voir, oui, oui, oui
Goûtons voir, non, non, non
Goûtons voir si le vin est bon

and changed it to this

Arthur’s knights of le table ronde,
goûtons voir, tell is this wine good?
Quaff it down oui, oui, oui.
Quaff it down no, no, no.
Taste to see si le vin est bon.

I’m looking forwards to seeing what other people do with this exercise?
Thanks,
Ceinwen

I offer you only friendship:
I cannot love, nor can I accept
so heroic a love from you.
I am simple and frank.
You must find another.
It won’t be hard, then,
for you to forget me.

Take my hand, deep heart I’m here.
But no randy poke or wet welcome cunt
will make my love stand up and out of
those hidden places to scream love.
I live in a quiet place, come in please?
I may need to say that others/me will
voice their affection delightfully
sotto voce without
obvious dissembling. Yet you
will break your heart as you
determine to erase the trickling
waters as they break
surf upon the shore.
Making tiny waves.
whilst you long for storms.

Now try to make an English version of it, but that has some of the same music, consonant-sounds, etc. This is the kind of thing that Pound would do. Both quote a line in its own language, and get it into (often colloquial) English, in a mix of lines, a collage.

If you’re feeling adventurous, try skimming some poetry in another language that you have any sense of. See if one pops out at you. See if you just like it, more than any other in a selection, by other poets in the same language, and you don’t know why. Use online translation engines to work out what is the verb, what is the noun etc of each line.

Have a go at making a version in English.

Have you ever done one or more of these things?

1) use a line from a poem in another language, plus your translation of it

2) use some historical found text, which you have to find in a library (ie not easily ) and edit it to bring something eloquent out of it

3) use this and other fragments in a musical way, echoing and chiming against each other with the whole line (not just end word )

4) state or develop a strong opinion in the piece about political reform, deciding what you think about economics

Then, do you want to try?