Sogand Shenavar

on translating Seyed Ali Salehi

I have always been interested in the image that this poem presents; as a conversational poem in the form of a letter written to a loved one, the one-sided conversation feels like talking into the void and expecting a response. The speaker reminisces about the past and fantasizes about the future, sharing their dreams, despair, and sense of hope.

One of the difficulties of translation was finding English versions of certain Farsi words with many variations. For example, the English translation of the poem uses the word "dream" throughout. In the Farsi version, nearly every mention of "dream" is actually written using a different word. These Farsi words are not necessarily equivalent to the ones used in the English translation. In one instance, the Farsi poem uses a word that discusses delusion, but I chose to translate this word to "murky dream" because Salehi is using the Farsi word in a more positive tone than the English "delusion." Then, later, in the line: "how rainy it was for our dreams this year," the Farsi word directly translates to sleep, but the word "sleep" doesn't fully evoke the meaning of the line, so again I replaced it with "dream."

Another instance of this translation by interpretation was for the line: "but at least occasionally make note." In the Farsi version, the poet uses several words in close succession that convey a similar meaning but with slightly different direct translations. Salehi writes وهله، گاهی، هر از گاهی, which directly translates to "moment, every once in a while, and sometimes." The final translation conveys the meaning of all three phrases appropriately by using the English word “occasionally,” keeping true to the main idea in the Farsi version.