[Skybird]

Heck, that guy is doing a pretty good job with some other poems, too:

http://www.germanic.ucla.edu/NGR/ngr13/trrilke.htm

After the poems, the tanslator added some notes:

Translator’s Note: “Crossing the English Channel”

Partly thanks to a greater understanding of the creative process, partly thanks to the proliferation of inexact rhyme usage, we have come a long way from the days when Verlaine’s “Il pleure dans mon coeur” was ren�dered in English as “It cries in my heart.” Nevertheless, each translator, set�ting out to make the rough crossing from one language to another, is still taking chances when determining his priorities. At one end of the spectrum are those translators who would settle for transferring content; at the oppo�site end are the often monolingual poets translating “with” a native speaker. There the perils are dual: Inaccuracies arising from the middle-man, and the poet’s converting the original into one of his own creations.
C.f. MacIntyre, a pioneer translator of Rilke who, along with actress Luise Rainer, introduced me to the poet, appeared to have a simple formula to achieve transformation from German into English: He forced the con�tents of each poem into a rhyming entity by interspersing it with material not found in the original. Even in recent, more sophisticated translations, monstrosities occur. Walter Arndt, in comparing translations of Rilke’s famous “The Panther,” accuses J. B. Leishman of choices the “disqualify the whole enterprise” (159), and M. D. Herter Norton of “a failure to try” (160). Worse, in comparing versions of “Going Blind” (“Die Erblindende”; see “Woman Going Blind,” above) Arndt lashes out at Stephen Mitchell’s work, accusing him of ineffective rhyming (“table/painful”), of “idly” tam�pering with content, and of being insensitive to meter, among other things: “…Mitchell is constrained throughout by his equipment to rate the conven�ience of the prosodically untutored translator above the esthetic identity of the poem” (166).
Such a vituperative attack is wholly uncalled for. Translation is, at best, an imperfect art. Since the color of no two languages is the same, any effort is doomed to fall short from the start. Here is Mitchell’s final stanza of the poem:
She followed slowly, taking a long time,
As though there were some obstacle in the way;
and yet: as though, once it was overcome
she would be beyond walking and would fly. (166)
Yes, “taking a long time” is flabby for “und sie brauchte lang”; “some obstacle” for “etwas,” being gratuitous, poses some obstacle indeed-call it “inorganic language”; and “once it was overcome” for “nach einem �ber�gang” is merely clumsy. The final line evokes the unfortunate image of Mary Poppins sailing over the rooftops. Yet Arndt’s own translation is hardly unflawed. The very opening “Sie sass so wie die anderen beim Tee” becomes “She sat at tea just like the others. First”. Here the rhythm is im�mediately violated by the “First”-part of a new sentence that should not have begun until line two. The moral is that ultimately we must all fall short of perfection.
My own theory of translation derives from Verlaine’s dictum concern�ing all poetry: “De la musique avant toute chose.” The music of the poem (or, given that no two languages sound the same, the rhythm, at least) must remain intact. We can recognize a piece by Mozart or a poem by Rilke by its rhythms, and we should be able to do the same with a translation-that being the litmus test. As for the content-its language, in English, must be organic to the poem as a whole; “seamless is a term (from Rilke’s “The An�gels”) that might be apt. Lastly comes the rhyme, for Rilke’s lyric poetry without it ceases to be Rilke’s lyric poetry. Here is where the hard labor comes in: turning, molding, softening the lines until they acquiesce, until they become plastic and flowing, their syntax comfortable in their adopted new language.
These then, to recap, are the three magic wands of translation: Rhythm, meaning depicted faithfully in organic language, and rhyme capping a fluid syntax.