Homophonic Translation: A Primer

what is homophonic translation?

Homophonic translation is traditionally defined as a method of translation which attempts to translate the sound of text (rather than its meaning) in order to create an entirely new piece of writing. Because the original meaning is abandoned, it has primarily been used as a method for writing poetry instead of as a viable means of translation. Similar to erasure, cut-up, or found language poetry, poets use homophonic translation as an appropriative writing method that alters existing text to create original poems. There are two primary methods: my own method which I call “re-sounding” and the more popular method which I call “approximation.”

Re-sounding Method

The re-sounding method involves re-sounding a text based on each individual letter’s potential for sound within a language, in order to create new phonetic options for how to pronounce the sequence of letters that make up the text. For instance, “c-a-t” is pronounced as the word “cat” (feline), but it can also be re-sounded as “ash” (silent ‘c’ as in “indict”, sh-sound for ’t’ as in “ratio”), “seed” (saying the letter ‘c’ as “see”, silent ‘a’ as in “peat”, d-sound for ’t’ as in “latter”), or more than 60 other possible words and phrases. I developed this method in 2007 as an extension of my obsession with turning everything into a pun, and I have honed it following several years of practice and linguistic study. Since the early 2010s, I have written my poetry exclusively through this method.

approximation Method

The approximation method, meanwhile, accounts for the majority of homophonic translation, and it occurs between languages, such that the translator is only concerned with translating phonetically from the source language, so that only the sound is preserved in the new text. For much of the 20th century through present day, homophonic translation—via the approximation method—has been regarded as merely a poetic exercise, little more than an interesting form of wordplay. Poets such as Charles Bernstein and Christian Bök have tended to translate homophonically from an unfamiliar language into their own native English, creating poems which straddle the line between sense and nonsense. Louis Zukofsky’s translation of the work of Catullus is perhaps the most famous example of homophonic translation, approximating the sounds of Latin into English. Another well-known example of homophonic translation through the approximation method is David Melnick’s Men in Aida, which translates Book One of Homer’s Iliad phonetically from Ancient Greek into English.

Examples of the approximation method from English-to-English are, unfortunately, less well-known. The earliest of such works is Howard L. Chace’s Anguish Languish, a collection of light-hearted homophonic translations of fairy tales and nursery rhymes published in 1956. The title is itself a translation of “English Language,” and included in the collection is his translation of “Little Red Riding Hood,” transformed into “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.” Fifty-three years later, William R. Howe published his book translanations one, an English-to-English homophonic translation of poems 500-599 by Emily Dickinson. More recently, Keith Donnell Jr. has published a number of what he calls “sound translations,” which are English-to-English homophonic translations of such texts as the Presidential Oath of Office, the Miranda Warning, the 13th Amendment, and the Gettysburg Address. Donnell Jr.’s work is especially noteworthy for his use of the method as a way to harness the potential of these texts’ otherwise-unused phonetic excess, thus turning the text against itself as a form of radical critique and exploded possibility.

Getting started with homophonic translation

Regardless of method, homophonic translation stands as an underused and radically transformative means for writing poetry. For anyone interested in experimenting with homophonic translation, please feel free to contact me at ryanlandryclark [at] gmail [dot] com.

Books to Check Out

translanations one
William R. Howe
BlazeVOX books, 2009

Men In Aida
David Melnick
Tuumba Press, 1983

Anguish Languish
Howard L. Chace
Prentice-Hall, 1956