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Review title: Shoddy translation
Product review: I don't speak Portuguese, but I've read Pessoa in Italian translation, and I consider his poetry remarkably powerful. I would think that, based on linguistic similarities, Italian translations in general would be more faithful to the original Portuguese than English would be.I bought this edition of Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith, and was so terribly disappointed by the shoddiness of the translation that I was forced to write this review to defend Pessoa. Zenith fails miserably in conveying the sheer haunting power of Pessoa. Zenith's English is too colloquial for the task. Portuguese is not like Russian or Arabic: one would have to work fairly hard to make a translation this bad; or be awfully enamored of one's own poetical abilities, instead of being a faithful conduit of the original language.You ought to read Pessoa, but find a better translation.
