Hofmann translates Durs Grunbein

In the translator's preface, Hofmann owns up to his limitations and strives to focus on using his own voice to establish a tone that is as close and authentic to Grünbein's as possible. With this approach a lot of literal meaning is lost, which is fine, but Hofmann occasionally does too much to explicate meaning, which robs some of the poems of important subtext. In being a diligent translator, Hofmann occasionally forgets that much of the joy in poetry is the reader's task of finding the hidden meaning that resides beneath words and lines. Nevertheless, Hofmann has accomplished an admirable undertaking, and he never gets to the point where he leaves the poems sterile and lifeless, which happens all too often with translated poetry.

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