I've translated a poem by Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", into Esperanto. How did I do?

http://katerinjo.tumblr.com/post/79256840507/walla...

Well done! Your translation flows nicely. I like how the 7th stanza sounds with the repetition of ĉirkaŭ, as well as the way you worded the 6th stanza (though transpasis is a very interesting choice - I understood the original as preterpasis, but I suppose there's no reason it couldn't be either one).

In stanza 5, I'm pretty sure fleksio is purely a grammatical term. I suppose it could have some metaphorical meaning, but I think inflection in the poem means intonacio. From the sound though it does suggest flexing as well, though, at least to my ear... it would be hard to convey both. Also, you should probably use belecon (with -n), since it's being liked - and perhaps merlon fajfantan as well. You could probably get away without the latter, but it would emphasize the parallelism.

Some grammatical doubts in the 8th stanza: it does seem odd to omit the ti-word in a ti-ki pair when the two have different grammatical roles (formas parton de tio, kion mi scias), though for the sake of poetry it might be acceptable to do so here (though to me it sounds fine with tio. And neforkureblajn... it's certainly understandable, but my brain wants to parse it as "that which cannot be runned away" and balks at the grammaticality. Any reason for not going with neeskabeblajn or neeviteblajn? I may be wrong, but I almost always see "x-ebla" as "tia, ke oni ne povas x ĝin" and it jarred me to see it on an intransitive verb.

Akre is a great word for the 10th stanza, isn't it?

You have a typo in the 11th stanza (ponerdi should be ponardi). I might use super instead of trans because I think it's important how the original leaves open the possibility that this is a flight until the word "coach", but super might be too overy.

Suggestion for stanza 12 line two: "La merlo nepre flugas." Yours, however, is more faithful.

Love the first line of the 13th stanza and the flow of the next two. I believe you want branĉoj in the last line. According to the PIV, the limbo is the flat part of a leaf or petal, not a limb.

Sorry for such a comb-through - it's a great poem and I couldn't help thinking about it!

Thank you so much for your critiques! I used "neforkureblajn" because I try to avoid glottal stops as much as possible, especially when it's the same vowel.

I don't know how much say a poet can have over the pronunciation of their work, but for what it's worth my Esperanto pronunciation is without glottal stops. I pronounce double vowels through length and intonation, somewhat modeled on how I would do so in Spanish (as in leer 'to read', for example). I'd be interested to see some numbers on how speakers differ on double-vowel pronuncations and how their native languages correlate.

Usually in words of the form X-ebla, the X will (if a verbal idea) be transitive. But the whole issue of the transitivity of a verb in Esperanto can sometimes be a grey area and there is a certain amount of pragmatism in the Esperanto compound.

A ne-irebla vojo seems to me OK for a impassable route, or one you don't want to take. However iri is marked as intransitive in NPIV

Usually forkuri will take a preposition (forkuri de, forkuri en, etc) rather than a direct object, but there is always rule 14 which allows an accusative to stand in place of preposition, though usage has determined limitations on this rule.

And of course there is poetic license.

There's a difference between birds singing and singing birds.

We would normally say mi aŭdis birdon kantanta en la apuda ĝardeno (ke birdo kantas).

But perhaps, mi malkovris poste ke mi ankaŭ surbendigis birdojn kantantajn en la apuda ĝardeno.

I think PMEG discusses this somewhere.

As you are contrasting the blackbird singing with the silence afterwards, I think my vote would be for preferi... merlon fajfanta aŭ tuj poste