Lý Đợi is wise and sensitive enough to “declare” right from the beginning, “It is impossible to translate poetry, yet it is also impossible not to translate it.” I admire his wisdom and sensitivity, yet I think it is not completely useless to analyze the translation in technical terms, which I believe will not lessen our readers’ enjoyment of reading his really cool poems. Below are just a few questions that might show up during the course of reading the English version of “Bọn mày tưởng tao là ai?” (“Who Do You Take Me For?”)

#1 - tang tóc bao trùm khắp... => mourning covered all... [Why simple past?Has the tragedy already been stopped at the moment? If expressed with a simple past form, the action will have nothing to do with the present situation/condition, while the context definitely does not suggest that!]

#2 - ô nhục xâm chiếm thành phố từng được tưởng là một cục ngọc => ignominy occupied the city once imagined as a pearl [Why simple past “occupied”? Why “imagined” (được tưởng tượng) and not “thought” (được nghĩ/tưởng/cho là)?]

#3 - thủ lãnh, tôi tớ khóc than => leaders, servants cried plaintively [Simple past?]

#4 - thanh niên thiếu nữ, cả trung niên và người già thì yếu nhược => young men and women, even middle-aged and weakly old-aged people are in ruins [Compare this simple present finite with the other simple past ones, used in the same context!]

#5 - tất cả phụ nữ không còn sắc đẹp / đàn ông [giống đực] cũng không còn vẻ đẹp / và não thì phẳng lì và nhiều chất tẩy rửa... => all females lost their beauty / and males no longer had their handsomeness / and their brains were flat and smooth and full of detergents... [These conditions are still related to the Present tim; they should be expressed with the Present Tenses instead (for example, see “ARE” in #4)]

#6 - tân lang và tất cả bọn mày râu cất khúc bi ca / tân nương và tất cả bọn nhũ hoa than khóc chốn khuê phòng => the bridegroom and all beards raised their voices in an elegy / the bride and all breasts complained in their closed quarters [Are you sure a native English speaker will take “ALL BEARDS” and “ALL BREASTS” as “ALL MEN” and “ALL WOMEN”? Does English have this same use of “synecdoche” as does Vietnamese?]

#7 - đất sắp sụp (vì bọn ngu đần) sống trên đó / trời sắp rơi (vì bọn vô cảm) chứa trong đó / cả nhà và bạn bè Doi Ly nhện phải nhục nhã ê chề... => the earth was on the point of collapsing (because of the ignorant living on it) / the sky was on the point of falling (because of the insensitive contained in it) / all the family and friends of Doi Ly were deeply in shame... [Why use “ignorant” for such a strong and direct term as “ngu đần”? And again, on the whole, because the conditions denoted by them are all still related to the present time, all the verbs in this traslation should have been expressed in the Present Simple or the Present Perfect Tense instead.]

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