As for prizes, corrections etc. it may serve us all well to remind ourselves that, as learners of Japanese, our indulgence in this thread is akin to the parable of the 5 blind men feeling around different parts of an elephant and interpreting it as a pillar, a wall, a rope, etc. Well, perhaps not that bad
, but still…
What I enjoy most about the thread is the different thoughts and ideas that people bring to the table on how to interpret these very terse, grammatically challenging poems that are steeped in a culture that all of us, as foreigners, are learning about and trying to get closer to. In that sense, all translations, opinions and comments matter. If we take it in the spirit of learners.
I take @Rrwrex 's comments and awards in that spirit and really not as a competitive assessment. In fact, he regularly admits he’s wrong (as do most - if not all - of us here, at least when it comes to translating Japanese). So, I focus on the translation and the input from others as a learning experience. As I do the final, mashup version.
As for the prize, the real winners are those who wrote the original 川柳, no? We’re merely parasites feeding off their hard work
, for our own benefit. Even when we do it incorrectly, we benefit thanks to the participants here.
For me, that is the real prize.
It’d also behoove us to remember that the way poems are read or understood is quite personal - even those in one’s mother tongue. All the more so with translations. For example, there are umpteen different translations of Basho’s haiku of the “old pond,” and, of those, I haven’t found a single one that I think captures the original mood, particularly the 水の音 bit in English. Ditto for Ryokan’s “moon in the window” haiku. But that’s my very subjective nit-pick based on my limited understanding of Japanese, and despite the fact that the translators I’ve read are illustrious notables in the fields of literature and translation.
Bottom line - trying to capture the Japanese “mood” (i.e. cultural baggage) into the English/Western mind-set (i.e. a very different cultural baggage) is, at worst, a fool’s errand, and, at best, prone to have mistakes and misunderstanding.
In the end, we need to pool together what we all have learned so that we can come to the right conclusion, “Aha! An elephant has trunk, four legs, big stomach, tail, and floppy ears!!” Not to be the blind men of the parable is the prize.
Apologies for the long, rambling discourse.