so … alabama

so alabama you’ve decided to

make ab*rtions illegal in your state

it’s like you’ve pressed a progression undo

Roe v. Wade is what you want to negate

you aim to take the restrictions f u r t h e r

eliminating the practice and thought

mixing churchandstate, saying its murder

tying the ab*rtion restriction knot

democrats on the other side of this

argue it will only make it unsafe

freedom and privacy? rights to be miss

a mother gone – their child? now a waif

two sides, debates only getting hotter

to solve is to mix oil with water

 so … alabama: Translation Analysis

Have you ever wondered what Cinderella would be like if it was an action story? What

about a chemistry book but as a graphic novel? Or your favorite murder mystery book as a movie

script? With the help of a genre translation this is all possible. The number of genres that exist

are almost endless. Through the understanding of each it becomes possible to take one genre and

transform it into another. The new piece of writing can elicit a different reaction from the reader

or even take on a whole new audience. To examine this phenomenon, I translated a New York

Times article pertaining to the Alabama abortion laws into a sonnet with a twist. The poem

follows the Shakespearean sonnet format, 14 lines with an abab cdcd efef gg rhyming scheme

(three quatrains and a rhyming couplet) in iambic pentameter (10 syllables in each line). Every

step in the poem creation process focuses on what the words convey. By shortening the text, it

conveys the main arguments in the news article. The rigid format created a lot of restrictions but

pushed me to think outside of the box.

The reason behind this translation was to challenge myself to write in a genre that I was

unfamiliar with. Poetry is a genre that comes in several forms. Poems can hold a mass amount of

information within a short amount of text, as in mine. What mainly attracted me to writing a

poem was the freedom and thought-provoking nature of it. Some poems can be shallow, but

others can have much more meaning hidden in the words and sentences. Poems can have a

physical appearance, incorrect grammar, figurative language, abstractedness, etc. Poems can

have a different response from each reader. This makes poetry so unique. By choosing to

translate a news article into a poem, I was able to capture some of these aspects while still

keeping the integrity of the original text. The shortness of the poem created a focus on the key
details of the news article. The reader could still form their own opinion from the writing. To do

this successfully, I approached the writing process in a stepwise fashion.

I first had to understand how poems and news articles were written in order to

successfully translate between the two. As Kerry Dirk mentions in his paper, “learning about

genres and how they function is more important than mastering one particular genre; it is this

knowledge that helps us to recognize and to determine appropriate response to different

situations,” which entailed me to understand the purposes of both the writings (259). In doing the

translation, I learned that news articles are straight to the point and aim to educate the reader

about current events. The writing in them is formal, that is correct grammar and no jargon. They

include quotes from direct sources as a way to keep the writing flowing. The goal is to inform

the public with facts. On the opposite end of the writing spectrum are poems. This genre of

writing can lack clarity, be abstract, and divert from correct grammar conventions. They do not

always have to be factual. The purpose of poems can vary from piece to piece and the readers

response can be different in each case. Although there are some characteristics that the two

share.

From translating the news article to a poem I noticed the similarities between the two, as

in the ability to convey the same content. The New York Times’s article showed how concise

and clear writing can educate the reader in a simple manner. You can gain as much information

from poems as you do from the news. My translation contains a fair amount of information but

lacks the clarity of the original text. The poem also maintains the aspect of conciseness like the

news article, largely due to the shortness. The poem imparts the reader with the meat of the

original text (crucial information) while the news article includes the meat and fat (extra details).
 Additionally, there were other writing facets that I had to address to create a successful

translation. Before I started to analyze my primary text, I had to consider my audience’s

expectations. As Brunn states in his article “How to Read Like a Writer,” I had to consider “the

author’s purpose for this piece of writing,” and “who is the intended audience is for this piece of

writing,” first (pp. 76). This was key in creating a difference between the two genres. The

original article’s audience expects to gain knowledge of current events in the United States. They

are people looking to inform themselves about the abortion ban in Alabama. Due to the subject

and higher level language this article is also targeted to older audiences. The news article is

written in a straightforward format; this appeals to readers who seek to edify themselves through

basic details. In contrast is the new audience of the translation. While the poem still appeals to

those with an interest in learning about the Alabama abortion laws, the poem lacks all the details

of the original text. The poem is short; it is a zoomed-out perspective of the piece. It focuses on

the overarching themes of the primary text. The poem appeals to a younger yet still intellectual

audience. It follows unformal writing conventions, such as the lack of capitalization (with two

exceptions). This is to show the article as casual as well to aid in a visual aesthetic. This

characteristic can appeal to younger audiences. The poem also allures readers who want to

analyze the meaning of the text and its stylistic choices. It is not a “simple” read like the original

text.

One can understand the context of the poem, but if one analyzes it a deeper meaning can

be found. The first step was to portray the word abortion as a curse word. Letters are replaced

with symbols, like the asterisk. Turning “abortion” into “ab*rtion” created a sense of taboo-ness.

Abortion has become this word that seems forbidden. I also chose to combine words, as in the

line “mixing churchandstate, saying its murder,” I wanted to convey how the two were
intertwined. The news article mentions that the right’s argument behind abortion was from a

religion viewpoint – essentially combining church and state into one entity when it is prohibited

by the U.S Constitution. No longer are they two separate things, as they should be, but one larger

one. Along with this I decapitalized the ‘a’ in Alabama while capitalizing the ‘r’ and ‘w’ in Roe

v. Wade. This was to relay the significance of the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v. Wade, which

takes precedent over the Alabama’s attempt to pass a law in direct challenge of it. Alabama in all

lowercase insinuates that they do not have the power to pass their law to eliminate abortion. The

rest of the poem is also in lowercase letters to create a sense of a continuous story. Punctuation is

used to create pauses while reading and inflections in the reader’s voice, as in “freedom and

privacy? rights to be missed.” This creates a simple question and the reader pauses and ponders.

Another feature I included were spacing out the letters in ‘further’ to give a physical sense of the

word’s definition – adding emphasis to it. Figurative language was also used because is an

essential aspect of poetry. In the lines “tying the ab*rtion restriction knot,” and “to solve is to

mix oil and water,” I made comparisons between the information to physical materials. The last

choice made in the writing process was the title. Naming it “so … alabama,” presents the piece

as a conversational; it’s a lead into a sentence, story, argument.

The shortness of a sonnet was another feature I had to keep in mind while writing. It was

a big challenge during the writing process. It required me to cut out a lot of detail, although the

loss of details did not degrade the quality of the translation. To conform to a sonnet’s format, I

had to cut out most of the content form the news article. Entire paragraphs were then summed

into new 10 syllable lines which stressed the imperative details. I retained the key purpose of the

news article, which was to explain the Alabama situation: what happened, why, implications,

oppositions, and conclusion. The other challenge I faced was keeping my opinions out of the
writing. The news article had an unbiased point of view. I thought poems had to be purely about

emotions but as I translated the news article I was able to separate my opinions from the writing..

The translation of the New York Times article to a poem shows how one genre can be

converted into another, maintain the same content, yet have different effects. Altering grammar

choices and writing style can drastically change the audience and tone of a piece of writing. First

the writer must understand the features of the genres. From there they can conform the primary

text to fit their new genre. A translation can reveal hidden information from the original source

and show the power of writing.

 Works Cited

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer”. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol. 2. Parlor

Press, 2011.

Dirk, Kerry. “Navigating Genres”. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol. 1. Parlor Press,

2010.

Williams, Timothy and Blinder, Alan. “Lawmakers Vote to Effectively Ban Abortion in

Alabama.” The New York Times. May 14th, 2019.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/abortion-law-alabama.html. Accessed May 20th,

2019.