This is a really neat post and thread at Languagehat.
Yes, for the very reasons you describe.
Wow, that's great stuff. My little project during my last hiatus was an attempted translation of an Iranian poem. I basically gave up in failure. It's really difficult to translate poetry. At least in my case, I knew that fidelity to literal meaning would kill the translation, but I couldn't get away from it.
That was indeed a neat post and thread. I like seeing what the different translators chose to emphasize.
That is cool. The Scots one at the end is easier to read if you know that 'quh' is the orthography for the sound we now write as 'wh' /ʍ/.*
So 'quhiſpir' is 'whisper'.
* probably pointing out the obvious ...
i liked too Henry Howard's version
he has a nice rythm and some ancient words i don't know sound truly poetic
My little project during my last hiatus was an attempted translation of an Iranian poem. I basically gave up in failure
i'm glad that it was a translation project
the failure, it's so very difficult to translate from my language, our poetry is really great, but can't be translated i believe