Mora language and Syllable language

Yesterday, I submitted ten pieces of tanka to the Akita International Haiku Network.

The association name is Akita International Haiku Network, but when I joined, it was called Akita International Haiku, Senryu and Tanka Network.

As a resident of Akita Prefecture, I joined as a member because the title name of the network included "tanka".

Last year, the name was changed to simply "Akita International Haiku Network", but it has still allowed me to submit tanka as before because of that I live in Akita Pref...

Although I have submitted 10 pieces of tanka poetry, I think the number of poems

is 20, because I have submitted my original Japanese tanka into English.

Most first drafts of the tanka were composed while I was morning-walking, and not composed just because the deadline for submission was approaching.

The photographs were the same done during my walking.

Some of the pieces were worked on after returning home from my walk, some just before the deadline, and some translations into English were done while I was walking, but most of them are right before the deadline.

It takes time to polish both.

Of course, it takes time to polish Japanese tanka, but it also takes time to translate them into English.

It's because I've been trying to translate with phonetics in mind these days, as opposed to the early days when I tried to translate simply into English.

Some people say that the arrangement of the sounds of 5-7-5-7-7 in Japanese is the same as the syllable arrangement of 5-7-5-7-7 in English tanka. Still, after I started translating into English, I realized that there are some discrepancies between the two languages, namely, the mora-language of Japanese and the syllable language of English.

The same problem can be seen in the translation of Haiku into English.

It's not just a matter of translating them according to the literal meaning.

It is the poem, which has an image like a Japanese tanka poem, and it should be composed phonetically.

How to solve this problem is a challenge for me at present.

The photo tanka is not a newly submitted tanka, but one that has already been published.

I took the photo while walking.

To my Interview on Poetry Matters