Poquette has a bachelor's degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses the effects of translation on Ho's Vietnamese poem.

Some of the most famous poetry in history was written in a language other than English. For example, Homer's epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, were originally written in Greek, but their translated versions have inspired writers and readers for thousands of years. Despite this fact, there is always the danger that something will be lost when a poem is translated from one language into another, especially if the two languages use radically different systems of writing. In Balaban's translation of "Spring-Watching Pavilion," he does lose certain aspects of the poem, while others remain intact through the translation process.

For examining how much of the poem has been retained through the translation process, it helps if one looks at...