Attempting to Translate

(one of my poems from English to French)

So here is my first attempt to translate one of my poems into French. I’m pretty far from any ability to actually compose a poem in French — I don’t know much about connotations and registre of French words, and only an intuitive idea of French poetics (e.g. I just realized that rhyme doesn’t work the same way in French as it does in English.) Nevertheless, I think it’s worth a shot. Maybe some of my francophone readers can tell me what usages are clumsy or when I mix poetic structures with common conversational ones.)

Anyway, this is a poem from my collection, Gentle Science. It’s called Photosynthesis (Photosynthèse). Tell me what you think.

There are fishers of sunbeams             Il y a des pêcheurs de rayons
   In green boats                                         En barques vertes
      On still ponds                                          Sur des étangs calmes
         Where the grana grow                             Où croissent les grana
         Like summer nenuphars.                         Comme des nénuphars d’été.

The careless photon caught,                   Le photon distrait capturé,
   The boat rocks,                                          La barque vacille,
      The pond ripples,                                       L’étang frissonne,
      And everything stirs -                                Et tout se remue —
	 Just a little.                                                   Juste à peine.

So here are some things that bother me about this translation. For one thing, it’s line by line, which may enforce an unnatural word and concept order. For another, the translation lacks some elements that I put into the English version: syllable rhythm, alliteration, etc. I don’t use rhyme in the original so I don’t have to worry about that, at least.