Image by SilviaP_Design from Pixabay
Today's exercise from NaPoWriMo asks us to take a poem written in a language foreign to us and attempt to translate it without knowing the words. I decided to use "In Ithilien", which is written in the fictional language Neo-Sindarin, and give it a crack. This poem and more were found on this website. The original words and translation belong to their creator.
Original Poem
I laiss i-ferin thuiar
I 'wilith lim echui aur.
I mrethil peliar duiw laiss
Af filig linnol der' ennas.
Vi Ithilien, dôr lenthir lind
Gorain nesta velethril nín.
My Translation
I but a lass did travel there
I went off to lands beyond
The world is perilous to a lass
A feeling of loneliness inside me
In Ithilien I found myself
Going nowhere with none but me
The Actual Translation
The leaves of the beeches breathe
The sparkling air of day's awakening.
The birches spread the buds of leaves
For the small singing birds to linger there.
In Ithilien, land of the tuneful waterfalls
Wandering-together heals my beloved.
notes
This poem will not appear in my forthcoming poetry collection. It is an exercise primarily utilizing work created by another poet.
If you are interested in reading more of my poetry, check out my first poetry collection here.
Text copyright Cara Hartley 2020 except as indicated.
This post is cross-posted to:
Plus my mental health side blog on Blogger which has virtually no audience and which I don't care to cultivate an audience for. It mostly continues to exist because I have OCD and have an obsessive need to categorize things.
I am not using "OCD" as a euphemism. I literally have this condition. Using health conditions as adjectives or euphemisms isn't cool.
Free Education
OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is not one size fits all. It expresses itself differently in each person who has it. Not everyone who has OCD is a germophobe with an obsessive need to clean.
I'm not germophobic and, unfortunately, someone killed my inner housekeeper.
I have an obsessive need to categorize things, I have a strong preference for odd numbers for no logical reason whatsoever, and, most detrimentally, I have hoarding tendencies which make getting rid of things that most people would have no problem disposing of a struggle for me.
My son and I are working to correct the problems this has caused and he is working on not allowing it to become as much of a problem in his life because he has the tendency too.
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What an intriguing exercise.
ReplyDeleteTolkien apparently said that cellar door was the 'most' beautiful phrase - not because of its meaning but because of its sound... Which also makes it totally antionomatopeic.
I love this exercise. It's great fun.
DeleteI've always thought the word "ashen" had a beautiful sound, which my mother thinks is terrible of me because, of course, it indicates an unhealthy pallor. However, I don't mean that I find the MEANING of the word beautiful, only that the word itself sounds beautiful.