Lost in Translation - Suzette Richards's Blog

Oscillation in nature: Wave properties – via The Physicist

I am curious: How many poets on here rely on a translation app to understand contest prompts? Or even rely on AI to interpret the contest requirements? English is not necessarily the first language of many of our fellow poets. Their language framework might also differ.

How Oscillation Might Translate?

EXAMPLES OF WHAT IS MEANT BY ME

Juxtaposition Approach (Contrast): ‘A mother sings to her child, soft as the rustling neem leaves. Outside, the storm howls—a wild thing separate from her hush.’

Here, the storm and the lullaby exist in contrast—two independent forces. The boundary between them is fixed.

Oscillation Approach (Fluid Transition): ‘A mother sings to her child, soft as the rustling neem leaves. The storm hums in reply, threading its breath into hers. She inhales its restless rhythm, exhales the melody, weaving hush into howl.’

This version dissolves the boundary between inside and outside, merging the lullaby’s flow into the storm. The oscillation happens in movement—the back-and-forth breath work of quiet and turbulence.

Oscillation is one of those concepts that feels natural within English literary tradition but may not resonate as intuitively in other language structures. There are several other examples of literary or poetic techniques that English speakers often assume to be universal, but that may not be common—or even exist in the same form—within other linguistic traditions:

1. Ambiguity in Syntax (Multiple Interpretations) – English thrives on syntactic ambiguity, where sentences can be interpreted in multiple ways due to word order and flexible grammatical structures. Many East Asian languages, like Chinese and Japanese, rely heavily on context and lack inflectional variation, making such ambiguity less common or differently structured.
2. Stream of Consciousness – This narrative technique, where thoughts flow uninterrupted in a character’s mind, is deeply rooted in English modernist literature (think Virginia Woolf or James Joyce). In contrast, languages with stricter grammatical rules, such as German, or languages with a more paratactic structure, like Chinese, may struggle to replicate this free-form, internal monologue in the same organic way.
3. Metaphor-Heavy Abstraction – English poetry and literature often use abstract metaphors as a primary tool for meaning-making. While this is present globally, certain languages—like Finnish and Japanese—tend to ground their metaphors in sensory and nature-based imagery rather than philosophical abstraction.
4. Irony and Understatement (especially Deadpan Delivery) – British English, in particular, leans into irony and understatement as a cultural mode of expression. In languages like Hindi or Arabic, irony tends to be much more explicit or exaggerated. The same goes for certain East Asian languages where directness is valued over implicit humor.
5. Rhyme as a Dominant Poetic Feature – Many Western poetic traditions, particularly English, emphasize rhyme schemes as a marker of structure and musicality. Meanwhile, languages like Japanese (with syllabic constraints) or Chinese (where tone affects meaning) often rely on rhythm, repetition, and parallelism rather than formal rhyme patterns.
6. Ellipsis & Open-Endings in Poetry – The concept of leaving a poem deliberately unfinished or trailing off for reader interpretation is very natural in English poetry (and something I explore deeply in Suzette Swan Arc!). However, some linguistic traditions—such as Spanish and Russian—favor resolution and completeness, making the idea of a deliberately inconclusive ending less intuitive.

Much like oscillation, these literary techniques reflect the cultural and linguistic assumptions baked into English literature.

Microsoft Copilot 21/5/2025

Now I understand why some poems “work” and others don’t (where I find it difficult to comment on poems – not just for my contest entries). I hope you found the above as informative as I did – AI has its uses. :)

I will keep these differences in mind when I judge my current contest.

Happy quills!

 Su