lost in translation

it took me twenty four hours [well, three days] to finally decide on a title for this piece… which translates timewise as eight hours per word, or one hundred and two minutes per letter, four hours per vowel, three hours per consonant.titling art [paintings] can be a tricky and solitary task - well, if i could say it in words...i also had to write some other words to go with the title words. i thought about it all day on sunday. some thoughts completely take over your headspace, the more you try to refine them the less sense they seem to make. incorrigible.a weekend lost in my own world of translation. wordblock. grasping at floating fragments of thoughts, ideas, words, sounds, meanings, coaxing them out of retreat, trying to make them perfect...the 'show & tell' with Artworks was helpful, and always fascinating and exciting to see what the other artists have done. it was suggested i read some Pablo Neruda poetry, which subsequently got me thinking about the issues in reading poems in translation.i found this archived article, The Poetry of Neruda [october 1974] on The New York Review of Books website an interesting read....Para que tú me oigasmis palabrasse adelgazan a vecescomo las huellas de las gaviotas en las playas.So that you will hear memy wordssometimes grow thinas the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.*that's the beginning of the poem Para que tú me oigas [So that You Will Hear Me] by Pablo Neruda, translation by W S Merwin in 'Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair' [Penguin Classics 2004]* interestingly, Google Translate translated it as this:For you to hear memy wordssometimes grow thinas the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.