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So, I was watching an episode of 90 Day Fiancé the other night and the guy from the episode had to use Google Translate to communicate to his fiancé. Imagine that, having to speak what you have to say into a phone, wait for it to translate it, and then spit out what you said in a different language, sometimes not even accurately, I might add. Anyone that has ever used Google Translate knows very well how… HORRIBLE it is at translating, I mean sure it does get somethings right. I’ll give it some credit but, a lot of times it messes up some words. Something similar happened in Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger. Weinberger brings to a short work, 19 different translations of an ancient Chinese poem. Bringing in a wide variety of authors from Ezra Pound to Gary Snyder. He even brings in different languages not restricting translations to English, he also includes Spanish and French. The great thing about the variety of authors is it also comes with a variety of; comments, thoughts, criticism, etc. One of the translations that caught my attention was that of Ezra Pounds. One of the strangest things of the criticism Pound received was that he didn’t know any Chinese when translating the poem. Even though he didn’t even know that language he was translating he took a shot at it, I think that’s a pretty brave thing to do. Another not he made was that he didn’t believe that a translation should be word for word but, instead if the translator can improve the translation, do it. He also believes that a translation isn’t a mirror identical image but, how it is more of a relationship of a “parent — child” relationship. I interpreted that as him saying it doesn’t have to be identical but, if it gets the same point across it’s good enough. When talking to a group of friends about translation I told them you know when you’re talking about something, and you ask them “you know what I mean?” and then they say “no” so then you reword it in a way that they will understand, I think that is translation. So, it was nice to see that Pound and I shared a similar thought on translation.