Forevernoon would seem to pose different problems to the translator than would prose, or than would more traditional forms of poetry, such as a haiku or a sonnet. I was immediately struck by the visual element; I didn't feel I was really appreciating the poem until I literally zoomed out and saw the shape of the page. Sometimes I felt myself trying to find a concrete shape in the typesetting; a brick, or a wisp of smoke, or something else related to the lexical part of the poem. I wonder what kind of weight the translator gave to this. I imagine it affected the word choice; keeping a line to the same length in English as it is in Icelandic. I wonder how hard it was. Longer English novels are sometimes split into two volumes for publication in German translation.
The compound words, e.g. "moonrotations" and "lightspiritstar" made me envious of this particular translator's freedom. Working with German sci-fi, I am always trying to find elegant ways to represent novel compounds in my source texts. I don't know if this bold strategy would work with what I aim to accomplish, but it does tempt me.
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