The translation that rewrote a poem in my classroom

Last month a student brought in a Persian poem that's banned in Iran, and I looked up three different English versions online. Each one changed the meaning enough that the whole tone flipped from protest to pretty nature verse. How do we trust any translation when a government's censorship can hide inside the word choices?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_dakota29d ago

Pretty sure three translators just made different choices, not a conspiracy.

wren_carr29d ago

That's an interesting take, but I see it a bit differently. Translation is never a neutral act, sure, but that doesn't mean every shift in word choice is a hidden government hand. Sometimes the translator is just making a decision for rhythm or readability, and sometimes older translations simply reflect the politics of their own time, not Iran's censor. You found three versions that flip the tone, which is a great teaching moment, but it might also show how hard it is to carry poetry across languages at all. The real problem isn't that we can't trust translation, it's that we expect one perfect version to exist when none does.