“Poetry … cannot be translated”

This is what translators call the theory of untranslatability of poetry:

“Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.”

Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

And that is precisely the reason why translators exist: to prove that it  is possible to translate poetry, or, in my case, re-create it in my language!

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