Every translator has probably had at least one moment when they longed to change something in a text they were working on. Ethics, of course, forbids it – not to mention the risk of getting caught.
Neither of these stopped Daniel Ladinsky, an American translator of 14th century Persian poet Hafez of Shiraz.
It’s recently been discovered that Ladinsky didn’t just make a few personal touches; instead, he’s been writing his own poems and claiming they’re the translations of Hafez’s originals.
Read on to learn more about this story, which raises so many questions about the boundaries of translation, creation, and identity.
Hafez of Shiraz and Daniel Ladinsky
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