Is Poetry Lost in Translation?

Abstract

Poetry is notorious for its quality of untranslatability. To Robert Frost, poetry itself is that which is lost in translation. But the works of great translators like Dryden, Pope, Ezra-Pound, Richard Burton, A.L. Basham, Edward Fitzgerald and a host of others have proved that even poetry is often amenable to translation. Yet, there is some truth in what Frost maintained, for some poems by their very nature have an in-built resistance to translation, as in this case for instance.