I translate poetry because I cannot resist its charm, and because I wish others who do not know the language in which it is written can also appreciate its beauty. The translator\u2019s ego is big here despite the good will, but the process turns out to be most humbling especially when it comes to \u201creverse translation,\u201d that is, from Mandarin\u2014my mother tongue\u2014to English (Ekaterina Petrova). In order to render MA Hui\u2019s contemporary rewriting of Tsangyang Gyatso\u2019s seventeenth-century poems while sustaining \u201cthe integrity of the source culture,\u201d as Bill Johnson would say, I need to \u201chumbly and practically\u201d learn the other language (Gayatri C. Spivak). I study the anatomy of English poetry\u2014reading Mary Oliver\u2019s A Poetry Handbook<\/em> and consulting other poets, for instance\u2014when translating MA Hui in order to choose the most appropriate figures of speech, mechanisms of spacing, punctuating, and rhyming for the English version. This process of translation is a journey toward otherness. (See the seven translated poems in Ellipses, No. 91-92. 2021<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Poetry is only untranslatable when the translator forsakes her power of creating poetry. In other words, to a translator, it is a myth that poetry is untranslatable. The charm of poetry owns to its specific, provincial linguistic and cultural identity. To sustain the poetic charm in a new language, the translator needs to break free from the linguistic confinement of the original to reproduce the artistic magnetism in a new form. The translator is the Muse of universes here, clapping her hands to rearrange \u201cthe alphabet of particles\u201d so that she can rebuild a new poetic space (Alice Major). She may let go in her creation some alliterations, sibilance, or metaphors loaded with cultural specificities, but she takes care to keep the soul of the original poem alive and makes sure that it is also appealing to the readers of the new language.<\/p>\n When translating my own poem, \u201cAlso a Stranger,\u201d I see myself rewriting some lines. Instead of saying \u201cpostmodern space\/is ravaged and fragmented,\u201d I have \u201cThe desire to conquer ravages\/our home, sweet home.\u201d I need \u201cpostmodern\u201d to articulate the criticism in the Mandarin version but find that\u2014along with the passive voice\u2014it harms the poetic nature of the English verses. \u201cThe desire to conquer\u201d would suffice instead in the English context as it conjures up colonization in readers\u2019 mind. Self-translation, in this case, highlights the translator\u2019s role as a poet.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>