Petrarch, The Vegetarian

 "If Petrarch did not invent the sonnet, he was surely the poet who gave it life and energy." This quote stood out to me and made me start thinking about how poetic forms are made, and which ones catch on. I personally prefer the Petrarchan sonnet to the Shakespearean sonnet for its less rigid rhyme structure. Of course, I want to acknowledge that it's unpopular to write any kind of sonnet in its traditional rhyme scheme and with perfect rhymes.

I wasn't aware that there was controversy surrounding Deborah Smith's translation of The Vegetarian (even having read the book myself.) Charse Yun brings up Smith's "stylistic alteration of the text." In talking about its translation, or mistranslation, Sun Kyung Yoon says, "Translation is driven by the imagination that is needed for creative writing, and literary translators should be seen as creative writers." That's been true to my experience with translation so far, where the issue is that it's impossible to make a literal translation into a good poem. In Smith's case, she introduced a feminist perspective in her translation that was not present in the original form of the story. However, it's difficult for the reader to know that the translation they are reading may not be true to the original story. Even more difficult is how the reader would be able to tell which aspects of the story were tweaked in the translation. Tim Parks poses similar questions in his essay, as how to know "who we should praise or blame."

-Hanan Akbari