Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Karo Caran has a PhD in Education and work in the IT. She published her latest novel, The Myth of Maya Joy, on Medium. Her other works include a volume of poetry entitled I Am the Air, a poetry-based memoir Life in Footnotes, and a novel Roman and Julian: A Love Story in Paintings. Karo translates from Ukrainian and Polish. Her poetry translation has appeared in Letters from Ukraine: Poetry Anthology (2016).
For me, translating poetry is a labor of love. This is because if I choose to translate a poem, I root for the poem’s creator. I want to give them their voice in a foreign language. I want to speak through them and remain silent at the same time, so as to maintain the spirit their work — as much as this is possible in poetry translation.
How to preserve the poet’s voice in another language? I’m sure each translator will have a different answer. For me this means analyzing the poem’s structure, eg its rhymes and meter, its tone and punctuation. Then I move on to word choices. Being a poet myself, I understand how precious each word is and how much it matters to the person who picked it out of millions of possibilities. Finally, I drape the invisibility cloak over my shoulders so I can discern the poet’s voice in a new language while reading and rereading their work.
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