(Note: Ruby text and CJK ideographs may not display properly on DSi)

Poetry is a long-standing tradition in many places in the world, especially in East Asia. Some of themost thought-provoking and simple pieces come from this portion of the world. To me, this is what defines it. However, for a foreigner, they become a complete nightmare.

Take this not-so-thought-provoking "poem" I wrote in Chinese while half asleep:

yú鱼yóu游gōu沟zì自xiǎng想gòu够shá啥bù不lòu漏zhí只zhāng张kǒu口


Translating word-by-word, you get something like this:

Fish swim ditch
Self think enough
Anything not missing
Only open mouth

This is hardly a good translation, and it doesn't really capture the true meaning of the poem. However, by doing it this way, arguably the most defining trait of these poems is displayed in full force: these kinds of poems tries to say as much as possible with as few characters as possible. With some smoothing and flavor text, it gets to something like

A fish swimming in a creek,
Fulfilled in its being,
Missing not a thing,
Its mouth agape.

You'll notice it reads much more smoothly and even rhymes a little. There's more words on the page, as well. As is common in poety around the world, words with only grammatical meaning are left out. Adding them back in makes a smoother read.

Even then, it's difficult to convey the true nuance of my drowsy mind, but that is the difficulty in translation. As with translating any literary work, there's multiple interpretations, which have their own take on the ideas presented in the poem. I'm curious how anybody else could interpret this.