Canonical English
One verified English rendering per poem — public-domain literary translation where one exists, a labelled literal trot where one doesn’t.
The Reader’s Library · Bilingual
TranslationsRead the original. Then the trot.
Poems written outside English, set beside a literal English trot — line for line, with the original always visible to Storgy plan members. Where a public-domain literary translation exists, we ship that. Where it doesn’t, we ship an honest trot generated by Sonnet 4.6 and labelled as such. No silent paraphrase, no false polish.
Anatomy of a translation page
What you’ll find on every page.
Translator notes
What the translator (or trot) chose to keep and what was set aside. Rhyme, sound-play, archaisms — surfaced so the reader can compensate.
The original, side-by-side
The source-language poem rendered in its own script (Greek, Cyrillic, Hangul, Arabic) beside the English. Two columns, line-aligned where the original permits.
Alternate translations
When more than one translator has rendered the same poem in English, switch between them with a single click. Compare without juggling tabs.
The catalogue
Poets in translation.
Frequently asked
Questions readers ask us.
What’s a literal trot?
A line-for-line plain-English rendering meant only as a reading aid. It preserves meaning at the cost of music — no attempt to reproduce meter, rhyme, or sound-play. Useful when you want to know what a poem says without trusting a particular literary translator’s interpretive choices. Always labelled on the page.
Why ship AI literal trots at all?
Because the alternative is silence. The Valassopoulos 1924 Cavafy isn’t on Wikisource; the post-1929 modernist canon is mostly under copyright. Shipping no English would leave the originals unreadable for most visitors. An honest AI trot — explicitly labelled and bracketed for caveats — gives a reader enough to engage, while the original (on any Storgy plan) gives them what to engage with.
How do I know which translations are AI vs human?
Every translation row carries a visible badge above the body. AI rows say “AI-generated literal trot · reading aid, not a literary translation”. Human PD translations carry the translator name, year, and license note. There is no silent AI here.
Why is the original gated behind a paid plan?
Hosting and storing the source-language texts isn’t the constraint. The constraint is editorial: producing trustworthy bilingual pages — verifying PD status, formatting non-Latin scripts, picking which alternate translations to surface — is the editorial work that subscription funds. Free readers get the canonical English. Plan members get the original beside it.
How do you verify a translation is actually public-domain?
By translator + year + jurisdiction. A 1924 Valassopoulos rendering is PD US (pre-1929) but isn’t guaranteed PD outside the US. Each row carries its own license_note, and the seed pipeline rejects entries whose status can’t be cited. AI trots are PD by virtue of generation; the original-language source is checked separately against the author’s death year.