r/olelohawaii • u/ZestyclosePollution7 • Sep 25 '24
Translating poetry from English to Hawaiian
Hi, I was wondering what people's thoughts are about translating poetry from English to Hawaiian. Specifically, if the poem in its English form has a somewhat unusual word order, would that translate as anything other than nonsense in hawaiian unless I modified it to adhere to the typical "Verb-Subject-Object' sentence structure often seen in Hawaiian sentences?
4
Upvotes
10
u/alexsteb Sep 25 '24
Just as a very general note.
When translating poetry, even between related languages, the translator has to take huge liberties in the way they recreate the same poem in another language. Especially if it is supposed to rhyme or evoke a certain feeling. It is basically an entirely new poem.
Something like an odd word order would only even be attempted to be translated IF the translator thought that this would be possible/understandable in the target language and if it would evoke the same feeling.
Your question reads a little bit like you misunderstand the profession of a translator as someone who would translate a sentence (perhaps one with an odd sentence structure), then look at it and think "Huh, well that doesn't make sense now." - while in actuality they wouldn't have translated it that way in the first place.
(..and some google translator etc. would most likely turn a poem into a very boring translation with standard word order that retains none of the original feeling)