POSTING TRANSLATIONS ON THE OLDPOETRY SITE

Other than the rule about the time elapsing between a poet’s death and their work appearing on the Oldpoetry site, I wouldn’t like to be too prescriptive about how we work. With translations though I do feel that we should try to make things as clear as possible for the readers and so I have some recommendations.

GUIDELINES FOR THE POSTING OF POEM TRANSLATIONS

If a poem is posted and a translation is available then the original language version comes first with the translation following. I believe that should be the case even if it is the translation that is the most widely read version. It is of course perfectly acceptable to use a second page with the translation first and the original beneath that for greater clarity in site searches.

The title used depends on which version comes first. In the standard format the title should simply be the

{{Original Title}} -- with English Translation

If a second page is used with the English version first then the title should be the

{{English Title}} -- a translation of {{Original Title}}

In both cases the poem should be attributed to the original poet and the translator, no matter how prestigious, should only receive translator’s credits. If it is the original poet doing their own translations give credit as both writer AND translator to make the point clear to the reader.

Examples of how this works can be seen with these poems
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/131104-Carlos-Drummond-de-Andrade-Diante-das-Fotos-de-Evandro-Teixeira------with-English-Translation
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/131102-Carlos-Drummond-de-Andrade-In-Front-Of-the-Photos-Of-Evandro-Teixeira------English-translation-of-Diante-das-Fotos-de-Evandro-Teixeira

In the infrequent case of poems with multiple English translations then the main posting should be the original language one followed by each of the translations deemed fit for display one under the other. It is then upto the mod doing the posting how many pages are used with the English translations first. They could be all placed on separate pages (with the original) and titled as above or all on one page, the main version could be at the top and the title would be something like
{{Main English Title}} -- and other translations of {{Original Title}}