I do remember the first time I studied Translation. My teacher divided my class into several groups, and each group had its own task, e.g. English – Vietnamese Translation, and vice versa. My group had to translate this Vietnamese folk-verse:
"Gió đưa cành trúc la đà
Tiếng chuông Thiên Mụ, canh gà Thọ Xương"
Well, it’s very difficult to understand Vietnamese poems’ meaning, never mind translate them into foreign language. But we had to finish such a difficult task. So we decided to do one-by-one translation, for examples, “Canh truc” was translated as “Bamboo Stick”, “la da” as “Mule – Camel”, “Thien Mu” as “The Wife of God”, “Canh ga” as “Chicken Soup”, “Tho Xuong” as “Well-done Bone”, etc. Our masterpiece was passed to other group to translate it into Vietnamese, then. We were very proud of our Big Mental Work.
And below is what our partner produced it into Vietnamese. It must be said that they were very cool, and good at the rules of Vietnamese Traditional Poem, thesix - eight sentence style (Luc Bat.)
"Roi tre vun vút vung ra
Lũ lạc đà với lũ la chạy cuồng”
Vợ giời gióng một hồi chuông
Gọi về ăn bát canh xương gà tầu "
Translation is really a great creative work!