The Visible Art of Translation
Oct 21, 2026 · 41 min · 11 segments
Kyo Gerrits from the INCREC project interviews Bas Belleman. Bas Belleman is a poet, translator, journalist and writer…
Kyo GerritsHost
And I noticed in the publication of the sonnets, you also at the back or towards the middle, you have this section where you kind of give a commentary on the poems, which is both a commentary on its meanings and sometimes of the translation choices.
Was that something you worked on during the translation process as well? Or is that something you realized afterwards you'd like to add? Or was that something the publisher asked you to do?
it started out with just notes for myself just knowing what i'd done knowing what i saw and i didn't have to look it up all the time just noticing some difficulties or double meanings of things that i wanted to include and i mentioned Gerrit Comray again the poet that did this wonderful translation of Cats and also of Shakespeare by the way he translated a few of his plays and I just love him.
And he had this wonderful book with, I think, 100 poems that he commented on in one and a half page or something.
If you have someone tell you why this is such a great poem, I've read it over and over again, I can't expect everybody to do that,
you
know, and they're not learned poet translators, so, and they don't know Shakespearean English, so I have to point stuff Just something simple like the word nothing would be pronounced as noting.
So much ado about nothing, for instance, would also mean much ado about noting.
And I noticed in the publication of the sonnets, you also at the back or towards the middle, you have this section where you kind of give a commentary on the poems, which is both a commentary on its meanings and sometimes of the translation choices.
Was that something you worked on during the translation process as well? Or is that something you realized afterwards you'd like to add? Or was that something the publisher asked you to do?
it started out with just notes for myself just knowing what i'd done knowing what i saw and i didn't have to look it up all the time just noticing some difficulties or double meanings of things that i wanted to include and i mentioned Gerrit Comray again the poet that did this wonderful translation of Cats and also of Shakespeare by the way he translated a few of his plays and I just love him.
And he had this wonderful book with, I think, 100 poems that he commented on in one and a half page or something.
If you have someone tell you why this is such a great poem, I've read it over and over again, I can't expect everybody to do that,
you
know, and they're not learned poet translators, so, and they don't know Shakespearean English, so I have to point stuff Just something simple like the word nothing would be pronounced as noting.
So much ado about nothing, for instance, would also mean much ado about noting.
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