The ways Sylvia Plath speaks Macedonian
I delved in the original of the American poet Sylvia Plath poems with an ambition to "move" it and give it a new
dimension compatible with Macedonian (a South-Slavic language). Regarding prosody, compared to the iambic in the
original, particularly in the early poems, the translation of the poems uses trochee as a meter natural to modern Macedonian
poetry and the closest one to the standard speech. The translation complies with the Macedonian grammatical and natural
gender, and the noun-verb and adjective-noun agreement in gender, number, and person. Cultural shift is frequently applied,
too. The poems crave for translation as a means of their resurrection, and unraveling of the powerful emotional input and
imagery, in another language. While translating I was tenaciously in pursuing of the light in the lines of Plath’s poetry
hoping to create by means of words a setting within Macedonian where that light will shimmer most intensely. The question is,
what would Sylvia herself say in Macedonian that the translator does not say? Yet she is meant to speak via the translator as
an intermediary, who unavoidably distorts the real picture in the mirror. Although translation of poetry can never fully
satisfy the appetites of the original, it remains to be the original’s sole destiny and way of survival. Poetry itself is a
certain translation of and deviation from the ordinary speech. Thus, the translation into Macedonian is actually translation
of a translation. Everything is Translation: the imaginary Original is a body enveloped in the myriad of garments belonging to
Translation.