Experiment 4: Google Translate Poems
The Poem
live
There was something in my chest.
I breathe deeply and not enough,
my lungs burst.
Probably from life.
Sometimes I say that my little lungs live an abundant life
It's a way of life - to you know you're still there.
So take a breath less.
My lungs were just injured.
Now I have learned the lungs cry on their own,
I move on.
Today I was inspired by one of Charles Bernstein’s, a contemporary of Mayer’s and a language poet, experiments. He suggests:
Lexical translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate it word for word with the help of a bilingual dictionary. (Rewrite to suit?). Or use Google's and other on-line translators, but keep it to word-for-word!
I decided to instead pass through a poem of mine through Google Translate ten times until changing it back into English and ended up with this:
live
There was something hidden in my chest
I can only breathe deeply and deeply, and that's not enough
And I still feel like my lungs are bursting
Probably from life.
Sometimes I say that my little lungs live an abundant life that keeps
them alive and cuts them apart, as if to remind you:
how much do you feel? He's alive. It may hurt you.
It's a way of life that you know you're still there.
So take a breath today
Light, light
Take it easy.
More time.
The deeper.
Less.
My lungs were just injured.
Now I have learned to make the lungs cry on their own
And I have to move on.
The next thing I decided to do is only delete phrases I want to omit, but not allow myself to shift around the order in any way or add anything in.
live
There was something in my chest.
I breathe deeply and not enough,
my lungs burst.
Probably from life.
Sometimes I say that my little lungs live an abundant life
It's a way of life - that you know you're still there.
So take a breath less.
My lungs were just injured.
Now I have learned the lungs cry on their own
And I move on.
And there it is, the final piece. I have to say, I even prefer some of these altered phrases than the ones I had in the original. My favourites were ‘my lungs were just injured’, ‘my little lungs live an abundant life’, and ‘the lungs cry on their own’.
Try this with your own poems! You may find some surprisingly beautiful phrases you hadn’t thought to include before.
Stay inspired.
