A lesson to be learned? Some thoughts about a poem by Uffe Harder

About half an hour ago I asked AI where this line of poetry came from: ‘Man kunne forestille sig solen’. It replied that it came from Årstider, a collection by Morten Søndergaard.

I replied that this was wrong, that the line did indeed come from a collection Årstider, but the line was the beginning of a poem by Uffe Harder.

AI admitted it had made a false association.

I had just translated the poem into English, so I asked AI if it could do so too.

Man kunne forestille sig solen

 

Man kunne forestille sig solen

som en stor sort sky

der langsomt bevægede sig hen over himlen

og efterlod alt mørkt bag sig

 

Man kunne også forestille sig

at skorstenen på fabrikken derovre

pludselig begyndte at ryge med hvid røg

og at rotterne kom frem fra deres huller

for at danse på asfalten.

 

 

One could imagine the sun

 

One could imagine the sun

as a large black cloud

moving slowly across the sky

and leaving everything dark behind it

 

One could also imagine

that the factory chimney over there

suddenly began to give off white smoke

and that the rats came out of their holes

to dance on the asphalt.

 

Here is what AI wrote back:

 

 My translation was identical except for writing  'and' in line 4 and the avoidance of repeating the word ‘smoke with’ in the next to last line.

 

I have tested AI many times with poems to translate. It comes up with hilarious suggestions quite often. To fail to spot the weakness of two ‘smokes’ in a poem is a typical lapse.

 

But the fact that my translation and AI’s are almost identical twins also suggests that the poem is perhaps more a chopped-up piece of prose than a poem.