Monterey Language Services' Blog » Haiku https://www.montereylanguages.com/blog Translation reaches every corner of our culture. Our blog shares stories related to translation, culture, language, quality, writing & interpretation through the eyes of translation professionals. Thu, 23 Apr 2026 23:32:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.35 Translation of Japanese Haiku https://www.montereylanguages.com/blog/translation-of-japanese-haiku-32 https://www.montereylanguages.com/blog/translation-of-japanese-haiku-32#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:27:00 +0000 http://www.montereylanguages.com/blog/?p=32 Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. In contrast to English verse typically characterized by meter, Japanese verse counts sound units (moras), known as “on“. The word on is often translated as “syllable”, but there are subtle differences between an “on” and an English-language “syllable”. Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 on respectively.

Robert Hass, a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, reads on TV his translations of selected haiku by Kobayashi Issa. This is part of the Poetry Everywhere project airing on public television. Produced by David Grubin Productions and WGBH Boston, in association with the Poetry Foundation. Filmed at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. For more information, visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere.

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