Haiku is the most iconic style of Japanese poetry. It rightfully enjoys wide acclaim around the world. But many English or non-Japanese speakers may not realize that haikus in translation are worlds apart from how they originally exist in Japanese.
Let’s take possibly the most famous haiku of all time, by Matsuo Basho, the most famous haiku poet of all time:
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
old pond (!) frog jumps in sound of water
This haiku is seemingly straightforward, at least for a haiku. Accordingly, it produces a pretty consistent array of translations:
The old pond;
A frog jumps in —
The sound of the water. (R.H. Blythe)
Into the ancient pond
A frog jumps
Water’s sound! (D.T. Suzuki)
These are pretty literal translations. They create a similar image and meaning. But for such a seemingly straightforward poem, the original Japanese does a number of things that, quite simply, do not ‘translate’ into the English language.
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First, there are simple grammatical problems that flow from the fact that Japanese is quite different than English. Japanese does not specify plural vs. singular nouns, nor does it have to use subjects or pronouns, which leaves a great deal of ambiguity. (There could be one or many frogs, one or many ponds, one or many sounds.)
Words don’t have to be arranged chronologically in Japanese sentences either, so the frog jumping in does not necessarily happen before the sound of the water. The lack of any sort of pause between the last two clauses makes them run together grammatically in Japanese—and in fact, an alternative literal translation might read “a frog jumps into the sound of water.”
Puns and double meanings are also far more common in Japanese. The word for ‘sound,’ oto, sounds like a sound itself, which is why a number of translations write the last line as plop.
Second, there are poetic issues. In poetry, the sound and juxtaposition of individual words are incredibly important. Sonically, the frog “kawazu” is the only presence of the ‘ah’ vowel in the poem besides the emphatic ya, making it stand out sonically. The words in English have almost entirely the same palette of vowels (frog/pond/water), making the scene feel monotone in comparison.
Haiku are also written as a single line, leaving a little bit more to the reader’s imagination. Splitting up a haiku into three English lines creates a great deal more structure and specificity.
Finally, there are cultural issues. Haiku follow certain rules, including that they always include a seasonal word. In English, it’s not clear that this is a spring poem, but in haiku, frogs usually refer to a spring scene. Haikus are further developed to represent particular concepts and spirits of wabi, sabi, and you-gen, concepts of ‘solitude,’ ‘refinement,’ and ‘mystery’ that have a lengthy, historical discourse and debate around them in Japan.
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Altogether, these problems can create a transformative difference between haiku and their English iterations. In Japanese, a haiku that will imply at once two or three different possible stories in a season, while using sonic devices to emphasize certain ideas and moments. No wonder a more ‘literal’ translation can end up far afield.
A simplistic, imagistic translation will not have the depth of story that the original haiku will have:
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Old pond — frogs jumped in — sound of water. (Lafcadio Hearn)
At the same time, defining too much of the who-what-when-and-where can create something weirdly specific and dramatic:
Pond, there, still and old!
A frog has jumped from the shore.
The splash can be heard. (Eli Siegel)
Commentary on this single ‘old pond’ haiku could go on forever. The nuanced Buddhist references behind the image sheds a whole new layer of meaning that goes undetected unless exposed by creative translation:
The old pond has no walls
A frog just jumps in;
Do you say there is an echo? (Robert Aitken)
So what is the best way to translate a haiku? Where do poets emphasize? Let’s take a look at what it takes to translate a haiku—how translators bring out the most meaning without compromising the haiku’s brevity or wabi-sabi.
Navigating Haiku’s Rules and Characteristics
Simply put, rules make haiku what haiku is. You can’t write a sonnet without 14 lines and rhyming couplets. Similarly, you can’t write a haiku without a 5-7-5 structure, a season word, and a cutting word.
Each of these issues becomes extremely problematic the moment you try to translate them.
Syllables in Japanese, called on or haku, are what we know as “mora” in English. Basically, each kana represents one ‘syllable,’ except for a contraction like the small ょ in しょ, which still counts as just one haku. So even a word like 東京(とうきょう), which sounds like it has just two syllables, actually has four haku. This means that five haku in Japanese are much shorter than five syllables in English.
Compare 水の音 (mizu no oto) to “water’s sound.” The former is five haku; the latter is three syllables, but takes just as long if not longer to say because English sounds give the mouth more of a workout. 東京に行く (tokyo ni iku) is seven haku; se-ven-syl-la-bles-are-long!
In conclusion:
Point One: Translations of haiku should be closer to three-five-three or four-six-four than five-seven-five.
Haiku’s Other Rules
Next, you need to include a seasonal word. There are many, many seasonal words, everything from spring birds to summer mosquitos to the autumn moon. Regardless, each haiku is grounded in a specific time of year. This should come through in the English translation.
Point Two: Describe the season, either subtly or overtly.
Lastly, there is the cutting word. Cutting words essentially replace punctuation in the structure of the Japanese poem and add hints of emphasis, wonder, or memory. They also point to the important parts of the poem and create the juxtaposition that is so inherent to haiku. Cutting words are often well-translated as line breaks and punctuation (dashes, exclamation points, or question marks).
Point Three: Cut apart and emphasize the part(s) of the poem indicated by the cutting word(s).
Literary Qualities of Haiku
So what about features that aren’t overt rules, but are more subjective qualities? These features vary. Some of them have been emphasized in the historical discourse over haiku. Some are present simply in the Japanese language. Every haiku is different. So from now on our haiku translation points are always “when applicable.”
To begin, haiku, at least as originally innovated by Matsuo Basho, were intended to create an objective view of nature that nonetheless invokes intense, genuine feeling.
Haiku, at least as originally innovated by Matsuo Basho, were intended to create an objective view of nature that nonetheless invokes intense, genuine feeling.
One reoccurring feature in haiku is ambiguity: blurring between the subject and the object, the spoken and the spoken-to, the poet and reader. This feature is a mix of the nature of haikus and the Japanese language itself, in which neither subject nor object is necessary for a complete sentence. This ambiguity invokes a scene rather than narrates it. It places a reader directly in the poet’s point of view. This allows for a broader set of interpretations instead of imposing a specific feeling on the reader.
Point Four: When applicable, keep the reader close to the scene, avoid dramatic storytelling, and embrace ambiguity.
Most haiku evoke an intense emotion. Is it pathos? Sadness? Joy? It depends greatly on the individual haiku, and some evoke emotion quite subtly. But haiku are rarely “zen” in their detachment.
Point Five: When applicable, evoke the kernel of emotion present in the original.
There are also those aforementioned Japanese concepts commonly explored in haiku, wabi, sabi, and you-gen. A translator should look out for Japanese that is associated with these respective themes of solitude, refinement, and mystery.
Point Six: Keep an eye out for wabi, sabi, and you-gen.
Finally, we shouldn’t forget the other poetic devices frequently employed by the Japanese language: pun and sonic play. Double-meanings are frequent in Japanese and are often impossible to translate into English. However, this can be made up for with allusion, metaphor, and metonymy. A poem that is playful in Japanese can be made playful in English without a pun.
Translators should also consider the sound of the original Japanese, since certain words can stand out sonically, or other rhythmic effects may be employed.
Point Seven: Keep an eye out for puns and the sound of the poem.
How to Translate Matsuo Basho’s Famous Frog Haiku
Putting together those seven points, here’s how I would approach the original poem.
First, a literal translation that takes into account everything we know about haiku:
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
old pond (cutting word!) [spring] frog jumps in sound (plop) of water
Point One: Translations of haiku should tend to be closer to three-five-three.
- I’ll only add a few syllables to the literal translation.
Point Two: Describe the season, either subtly or overtly.
- I’ll hint that it’s spring by translating “jumps in” as “springs in.”
Point Three: Cut apart and emphasize the part(s) of the poem indicated by the cutting word(s).
- I’ll write the poem as two lines, with a dash after pond.
Point Four: Keep the reader close to the scene, avoid dramatic storytelling, and embrace ambiguity.
- I’ll use the present continuous “-ing” and avoid using ‘a’ or ‘the’ in front of ‘frog.’
Point Five: When applicable, evoke the kernel of emotion present in the original.
Point Six: Keep an eye out for wabi, sabi, and you-gen.
- I detect strong hints wabi and you-gen in this poem: the intensity of a sound at an ancient scene, penetrating loneliness with life. I think that separating the pond and the frog into two separate lines helps emphasize this juxtaposition. We can further emphasize this by using distinct tones and textures for each line: make the first line specific and austere, and the second a bit dizzy and playful.
Point Seven: Keep an eye out for puns and the sound of the pun.
- I’ll use an onomatopoeia for ‘water’s sound.’ Our use of ‘spring’ instead of ‘jump’ also has a couple of uses here: it introduces more sonic diversity, and it adds an extra pun for us in exchange for leaving out the oto pun.
Here’s my resulting translation. Is it better than the others? Of course not! I also think it’s a bit too short and perhaps a tad too playful. But I think it’s about as accurate as you could get.
At the old pond—
frog springing in to
water plop
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