Take a poem that strikes the fancy; read it and reread till every word is clear and then shape the translation into a stanza and meter as near the original as possible. If there are four three-line stanzas in the original, build the translation into four three-line stanzas as closely line for line as the ease of the verse will permit. In translating from the German the original meter can be followed accent for accent, though this is impossible with the French, whose syllables are without emphasis, and would scarcely be advisable with any of the more complicated Latin meters.
At first it is a good idea to make the English verse rigorously exact in its meaning—to study every word until the verse not only rhymes and runs with some degree of naturalness, but also is a correct rendering of the cold facts. This is not so hard as it seems if one sits down and thinks the right word out, and it gives opportunity for an excellent overhauling of the vocabulary.
Any one who has had a high-school course in Latin can experiment with Virgil, turning it either into couplets like Pope’s Iliad or into the more appropriate meter used by Longfellow in his Evangeline. With a dictionary and a literal translation it is easy enough to puzzle out Horace, who is more modern in his thought and who is, in a way, the ancestor of our present vers-de-société writers. There is also this advantage in the translation of Horace: One finds a chance to compare his translation with the work of many others, for Horace has been more widely translated than any other poet unless we except the Biblical writers. The fame of Father Prout rests largely on his renderings of Horace. Austin Dobson has translated several of the odes into the French forms and many other poets have turned their hand to the task.
Among the Germans, Heine is a favorite with English translators, though many of his songs from their shortness and delicacy are hard to express properly. Goethe and Schiller have also been much translated and any collection of German poetry will show a dozen poems with which one has become familiar through the English versions.
Among the French it is difficult to specify any particular authors, as they have not been so widely translated as the Germans. Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier and Paul Verlaine are, perhaps, as well known as any other of the more modern writers.
In making translations with a view to the artistic side the result is apt to differ from the exercise which aims only at accuracy. For practice one should render line for line as nearly as possible. When one can do this it is allowable to take more liberties and reproduce the poem, not line for line as it stands, but rather as the author might have written it had he composed in English; to preserve the meter and general arrangement but to sacrifice details when necessary to the spirit of the poem. When the two qualities can be combined and a poem is translated in such a way that the lines correspond and yet do not crowd out the poetry the result is a masterpiece. But such things very rarely happen and require not only hard work but a flash of inspiration and good luck as well.
Very often a poem can be imitated from its mother tongue. A stanza or two may be expanded into a ballade in English containing an elaboration of the original thought. It is perfectly allowable to offer a composition of this sort for sale provided the source is acknowledged.