Lost in Translation
Lost in Translation
A Poem?
A Poem?
Write a poem, then let language distort it.
This assignment asks you to write a poem in English, then run it through at least three different languages using translation software before bringing it back to English.
Your goal is to embrace the mistakes, distortions, and accidental poetry that emerge.
Do some words disappear?
Does meaning shift?
Does something new—something unintended—emerge from the chaos?
Your final poem will either keep the strange translations or be rewritten using what the translations have revealed.
Write a poem about miscommunication, loss, change, or distortion. It can be any form, but the theme of shifting meaning should tie into the translation process.
Choose at least three languages that are as different from each other as possible.
Run the poem through each one before bringing it back to English.
Keep what breaks. Keep what surprises you. Keep what shouldn’t make sense but somehow does.
French
Spanish
Italian
Portuguese
Romanian
Arabic
Hebrew
Amharic
German
Dutch
Swedish
Danish
Icelandic
Mandarin Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Thai
Zulu (Bantu family)
Yoruba (Niger-Congo family)
Hausa (Afro-Asiatic family)
Russian
Polish
Czech
Ukrainian
Bulgarian
Hindi
Bengali
Urdu
Punjabi
English -> German -> Ukrainian -> Hebre -> Japanese -> Punjabi -> Back to English!
I used ChatGPT
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Two roads separated in the yellow forest,
I felt sad thinking I could not walk both roads.
Being a lone traveler, I stood there for a long time,
As far as I could, I kept looking down one road,
Until that road disappeared into the bushes.
Then I chose the other road, it was just as beautiful,
Maybe there was a better reason to choose it,
Because it was covered with grass and wanted to be used.
But in reality, because people had passed,
Both roads were worn down almost equally.
That morning, both roads were lying covered with leaves,
On which there were no marks of anyone’s footsteps.
Ah, I saved the first road for another day!
But I knew that one road leads to another,
So I doubted if I would ever return.
Someday in the future, I will tell this with a sigh,
Sometime in the distant future:
Two roads separated in the forest, and I—
I chose the one where fewer people had gone,
And that changed everything.