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I have recently had the pleasure of obtaining a copy of An Anthology of Odes by Pablo Neruda, collected and translated by Maria Jacketti. I had read Neruda before, but through the lens of different translators. While evidently talented, his poetry never really spoke to me. 

This time around however, each poem is so gorgeously beautiful and poignant, I have to wonder if it is the way Jacketti has translated Neruda’s lines that make it so fantastic. Growing up in New Mexico, a bilingual state, and having taken three years of Spanish in high school, I possess only a very rudimentary understanding of the language. Using my basic Spanish, I can compare the English versions of the Neruda poems to Jacketti’s translation. It’s evident that some parts she has hyperbolated or simplified or switched around, angling Neruda’s words through her own. I have always wondered what it is the reader is losing in translation, the subtleties of one language that don’t quite make it through to another. 

I’ll admit to being someone who  doesn’t just read for entertainment, but also for an emotional fulfilment that is reached when you truly grasp the emotional undercurrent that an author intends. For me, literature has always bridged the gap of human loneliness that can be inescapable in the human condition. So I can also admit that I find it a little isolating that I’m perhaps not grasping the full intent of the words of Rilke, Dostoyevsky, Neruda, or any of the myriad talented authors that wrote their masterpieces in a language other than English.