Translated from the original poem 'Homesick', by Salli Shepherd (*salshep).

This is a poem translation for *TranslationChain.
TranslationChain is a project in which a poem is translated by the participants from one language to another until the Original Language has been reached again. The goal is to see what influence translations have on a poem and also to get people together and experience the internationality of Poetry, the Poetry Community and DeviantArt.

My task was to be the first translator in the list. I had to translate *salshep's poem from English, her mother tongue, into mine - German.

For me it was very interesting to "return to my roots", since I have only been writing Poetry in English for almost two years now. Writing/Translating poetry in(to) German was something that I haven't done in ages. At first it felt weird, but because of my good understanding of English and all the experiences that I have gathered while transforming my own thoughts into English to write my own poetry, I got into the poem very well.
The vocabulary was not really a problem, except the word "Blinzhaut/Blinzhäute" in stanza 3, line 4. The English word, which I had to translate, provides a very open meaning and varied possibilities to interpret it whereas all German words that could have been used for the translation provided a very restricted and clear meaning, which didn't leave a lot of "poetry" of the original word. I tried to stay as close to my interpretation of the original word's meaning as possible while still remaining in the same field of imagery. I hope it went well.

Another minor challenge was the length of lines. All my German translations were of greater length than the original lines, which is something I had experienced very often before: In English it is easier to say more with less words. So I was struggling whether to do different line breaks or to keep the rather unsteady line lengths.

Being the first to translate was something very special. Not only did it mean that I was able to read the very original poem (which is excellent by the way! Make sure to read it when it will be submitted in the end of the project!), but also would this first translation step mean a first divergence and it would set the basis for all future translation.
Realizing that, I was very careful translating the poem, not to destroy its magic.

I wish luck to all of those who come after me!
And if YOU don't know *TranslationChain yet, take a look at it!

*FelixT




1 *FelixT English to German - done as you might see
2 ~GuBCM German to Portuguese
3 *S1mbelmyne Portuguese to English
4 ~Bersaglio English to Italian
5 ~iThemba - Italian to German
6 *endless-one German to Spanish
7 ~opiumsmoker Spanish to Latin
8 *NLY Latin to English
9 ~ordie English to Portuguese
10 *batousaijin Portuguese to French
11 ~DuilleogUaigneach French to English
12 ~Maly-Jo English to Spanish
13 ~AngelofGod87 Spanish to English
14 =Ronjana English to Dutch
15 ~Hongske Dutch to French
16 ~RagingGryphon French to English
17 ~AyumiFey English to Polish
18 ~hopelesswriter Polish to English
19 ~malicedomestic English to German
20 =chakrabird German to Danish
21 =Fladmose Danish to English
22 ~tigress-phan English to Dutch
23 ~Ailoura-aithe Dutch to English
24 ~ancient-seeker English to French
25 =lady-shirakawa French to English