The reason there are so many translations is that the Japanese and English languages work differently. The way I understand it is that their words are essentially all one syllable so in a haiku form it is much easier to express a scene in Japanese than in English because a word that may be 3 syllables in English would still be 1 in Japanese, making it possible to create much more sophisticated poems in the haiku form. I loved reading through all of the translations to see how each person interpreted the original.
I'm so fascinated with haiku and kind of wish I had time to learn Japanese so I could read them in the original language.
Japanese words are not all one syllable (tobikomu is one word), but the grammar usage is different. In Japanese you can leave out words like you, I, the, it, and, and most particles/articles (in the poem above, only the words 'ya' and 'no' are particles).
The haiku is a form which suits the Japanese language only because it reflects the simplicity of ways in which you can say something. Extraneous words are omitted.
That's true, but it happens in Japanese all the time as a consistent feature. For instance, the phrase 'honto ne?' contains the word for 'true' with the particle that indicates a question posed as a negative. In English you'd say 'is that not true?' or maybe, 'true, isn't it?' either way, we use more words in our sentence structure.
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Old pond
and a frog-jump-in
water-sound
That is the perfect description to me.
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I'm so fascinated with haiku and kind of wish I had time to learn Japanese so I could read them in the original language.
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The haiku is a form which suits the Japanese language only because it reflects the simplicity of ways in which you can say something. Extraneous words are omitted.
I just had to comment about that. Hi. Heh
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