Jorge Eielson #3 - mutilated body

In this poem from dark night of the body, the Peruvian poet, Jorge Eielson takes his exploration of the physiological to a deeper level, a level of dissection without disgust, without moral sentiments of any kind. The poet counts extremities "as were they cherries or grapes". One problem that arises in the translation of this poem is located in the first line: "Cuento los dedos de mis manos y mis pies". In Spanish, "dedo" refers to either "fingers" or "toes"; however, the line would become quite clumsy if it were "I count the fingers on my hands & toes on my feet". Due to this, "digits"– both the medical terms for finger & toes –has been preferred, partly because it captures this semantic aspect of the line, but also because it plays off the idea of "counting", albeit this double meaning does not exist in the "dedos" of the Spanish version. This sheds light on the translation process in general. While it commonly thought that the translation of a poem loses poetic elements of the original, this example shows that a translation can also add poetic elements without doing harm to the poem itself.