Re: Another Ozymandias

On 7/25/06, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> Part of the great power of Ozymandias is not what it *says* but how it says
> it; the "off-rhymes" are incredible (did we decide what we were going to
> call those?  You'd vetoed "internal rhyme):
Was that to me?  I didn't realize I had veto power. :)


> Do you stick rigidly to the meaning of the origin language or do you focus on
> making the target language poetic as well?
Allow me to state my opinion on the topic unequivocally:

Free verse is worth what you pay for it.
Blank verse leaves my face matching.
Slant rhyme should be slantier so the words slide right off the page
and disappear.

Capisce? :)

IMO, preserving the spirit of the form is  more important than
preserving the literal meaning, else why make it poetic in the first
place?

That's not to say the exact form need be carried over - as with the
meaning, literality is not always the goal, and sometimes it's wholly
inappropriate.  For instance, English "haikus" are far too easy to
construct if your only rule is 17 syllables.  An embarrassment of
riches!  Trying to come up with something meaningful in only 17
syllables of Japanese, *and* getting the obligatory nature theme in
there, is quite something.  But in English?

In English, it's true
You can construct a "haiku"
(And make it rhyme, too)

No effort required
To create one, impromptu,
(And not be admired)

The meter is odd -
A taste that must be acquired -
But still it's not hard.

(Though one may suspect
That "hard" does not rhyme with "odd"
In my dialect)


I've never tried to translate poetry into a conlang.  The temptation
to alter the language to make it work would be too great unless the
language were already sufficiently mature to resist such tampering.
So far none of mine are.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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