Poetry of Burns lost in translation to Japanese

But the great poet has never gone down well in Japan, and new research reveals that this is because his work is lost in translation.

An academic has tested whether the meaning of Burns’ work is lost by being rendered into Japanese and found that some of the Bard’s most powerful images fall flat.

Derrick McClure, of Aberdeen University, has produced a conference paper investigating the accuracy of Japanese translations of Robert Burns by translating them into English.

The immortal lines from ‘To a Haggis’ - "Fair fa your honest sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the puddin race" - have emerged as "Good luck to your honest friendly face, Great King of the sausages".

McClure, who works in the English section of the university’s School of Language and Literature, began reading and translating the poems over the summer with the help of researcher Mari Imamura.

It is understood that while Burns’ works have been translated into many languages, this is the first time they have been converted back from a foreign language to English.

The academic has dissected poems which were translated by the Japanese Caledonia Society. A member of that society is now looking at converting the works of Sir Walter Scott into Japanese.

McClure, 60, who was awarded an MBE in 2002 for services to Scottish culture, said: "A stated purpose of the translation is to render Burns’ meaning into easily readable Japanese, and superficially that is precisely what the translator has done, but at the cost of a major part of the poetic effect.

"The translation will give readers a very accurate impression of what Burns said, but they will not get any impression of his poetic skill."

Next year McClure, who has worked at the University of Aberdeen for 32 years, will travel to the Far East where he has been invited to speak at seminars on language and dialect in Japan and Scotland.