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Title: poems are okay but not of Ho Xuan Huong
Review: I spent six years in Vietnam as a linguist during the war, and have remained familiar with written and spoken Vietnamese because of various business ventures. The translator undertook a major task here, because the subtle meanings of language, the idioms, change with time. As best I can tell, he misses the mark often, and seems to have relied on a dictionary and his own poetic skill. You can actually look up in the Vien Ngon Ngu Hoc dictionary, and see how he pulled translations from the dictionary. People may or may not like the poems but I don't think they reflect the original of the author. It is too bad that the translator didn't consult more with native speakers, which generally would be standard practice.
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