This does not mean- as many translation enthusiasts and evenmany translators believe- that the object of a translation is t ocreate an original poem in English. (This is easily refuted by theevidence. The great translations of the century- say, Pound's"Seafarer" or Confucian Odes, Blackburn's Provenqal or his Cid,Rexroth's Li Ch'ing-ch'ao- t o name only a few among thedead- would all be ludicrous if they'd been presented as originalpoems by Americans of the 20th century, even as poems writtenin the voice of a persona.)