You've decided to translate a poem. Maybe you have been studying a foreign language your whole life and want to put your talents to good use. Maybe you just came back from vacation to an exotic country and fell in love with their national poet and you want to recall the romance. Either way, translating poetry is serious business and not to be taken lightly. Your job as a translator is not only to pass the meaning of the poem into another language but to respect and honor its spirit. I don't mean you need a séance with a thousand candles, begging the poem to breathe your page. I mean that there are some rules to respect when you translate a poem

 Stay Close to the Poem. Read the poem again and again until the words become second nature on your tongue. By doing this, you will be able to feel the rhythm of the poem. You will recognize the pace, the pauses, the beats, the swirls of energy. Write the poem in longhand and make ten copies. Stick these where you can see and read them. Try the bathroom, the kitchen cabinet, or the freezer door, leading to the Ben & Jerry's. These copies will familiarize you with the poem's grammatical structure: Where the adjectives are, where there is a break in tenses. Plus, if you put them on that package of Oreo's, it'll take you longer to gobble the bag down. You will have to read the poem first

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