Is the language of the poetry universal?

Question

do you think you get the same feelins when you read a poem in translation? Can you say that poetry is universal just like music??

Answer 1

I believe you cannot translate poems, nor literature, without losing some of the feeling and meaning. Every language has a certain "flavour", and is intrinsically connected to the people who speak it. A translation will never be able to capture that "flavour".

Answer 2

Not in the least. English poetry as it is currently understood is far from universal, it started going wrong with Gerald Manley Hopkins and is still sick. Most people would walk a mile, two, rather than have to put up with it. Most of it sounds and reads like gibberish, devoid of sense.

How could I know whether I'd get the same feelings listening to Verlaine in French as in English? My French is not good enough. In any case the associations of each word in French are different to those of the dictionary equivalents in English. So the meaning of Verlaine to the French can never be exactly the same as the meaning of a good translation to a native English speaker.

Answer 3

I believe so, as long as the poem is accurately translated. But, then again it may depend on the langauges because certain langs don't have expressions that others have.

Answer 4

I do not think so. Unless the traductor really understand the meaning of the poem. and the reader open his or her heart to see true the words

Answer 5

certainly is.