Recalculating translation no small feat (actual calculators help)

Long Island University professor Gregary J. Racz is no stranger to translation, but this is probably the first time his process of "re-writing" involved "re-calculation." Racz just received the American Translators Association (ATA) Alicia Gordon Award for Word Artistry in Translation for his work on only twelve lines in a poem by Francisco Acuña de Figueroa, “Profećia alfabético-numeral." Though originally written in the 1800s, the poem required some modern technology to make the leap from Spanish to English. Racz spent six weeks with a calculator at his side to make sure every meaning of every word and number was covered.

“It was the longest it took for me to translate a poem,” said Racz, who has contributed more than 300 translations of Spanish-language poems to journals and anthologies, “because I had to maintain the numerical value of each line in translation as well as the rhyme while also retaining the meaning of the poem.” It was necessary for Racz to get the translation and numerical value correct because the sum of the lines total 1847, a year that was historically significant in Acuña de Figueroa’s poem.