amphibian leaping in
aquatic sounding
And that's even worse... Basho done by the SAT. The sounds are lovely (the repetition of the t sounds, the a's, the p's in "pond" and "leap" rhyming with the b in "amphibian"), but those words don't sound right to the English ear, unless you're a pretentious shit. Plus, they're just not accurate--"antiquated" meaning something like "obsolete" (and I can't imagine Basho understanding a pond in the way we understand computers), and amphibian referring to much more than the species kawazu.
I was contemplating trying to translate the poem into Latin. Since our latinate English words seem most closely to approximate the syllable length of the Japanese, I figured they'd sound more natural and less hoity-toidy in Latin. Then I thought it would be even more hoity-toidy to translate it into Latin.
