Struggling with self-translation

In a recent interview with the journal Apogee, Hong Kong Poet Wawa (Lo Mei Wa) described the struggle of self-translating one of her poems into English:

"I do terrible in self-translation from one language to another because my linguistic personality, which was already laid down in the poem, is too complete. I know the cultural context too well. I am totally there. I couldn’t translate “Nation Rooftop” and I did it terribly. I translated the poem into an English dictionary."

To read the complete interview, please click here.