When examining a translation of a poem, one might consider it ideal to, first, find the edition from which the editor made his translation, and, second, to look at other translations. 
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           It is helpful at least to try to translate parts of the original-language edition in order to find a translation that agrees with one's own opinion of how the work should translate.  With the translation companions one has at his fingertips today, it is not very hard to look up the meanings of words or to get a rough translation of entire paragraphs.  Especially for researchers conducting their studies online, finding an original-language edition can prove difficult--translators often do not indicate from which edition they translated the work.  Therefore it is arguably most reliable to find translated work in a more tangible format at your library or bookstore, or to search for (or pay for) an online edition that has already been professionally published, best yet one found in a critical edition.

          If one is unable read the language in which the poem was originally published, it is hard to find the translation that communicates best to one as a reader.  From here, it is easy to find yourself blindly paddling through the muck that is choosing from multiple literary translations of a single work.  So, how can one find the translation of the work that is most conducive to his research if he does not speak the language in which the author wrote? 

          The fundamental problem is this:  in translation one often must choose a single signified from the original signifier; or a signifier with multiple signifieds, only one of which might match only one of the original signifier’s multiple signifieds. Beyond that, translators rearrange or switch words to make the work seem more artistic or readable--all of this is arguably based on the translator’s own aesthetic opinions.  So, forever left on the translation is the mark of the middleman; it is the editor’s graffiti and who can tell but one fluent in the original language.

          When you do not read the language in which a work was originally published, it is near impossible to connect the original meaning (or what your impression might have been from the first-language edition of the work) to the translated meaning.  When reading a translation, what you are often receiving is a slightly warped reflection of the original—it is like choosing a copy of a famous sculpture that had been replicated by a Sculpture professor and putting it on display in a museum to be evaluated by the public.  Why edit a literal translation when that could be considered the unadulterated meaning of the original?  Why invert word order?  In a few words, this is because a literally translated French poem just does not sound right in English—the adjective-noun order is swapped in French, and some sentences had slang or just might have translated awkwardly in the opinion of the translator.

          So, how does one find a translation that is most like the original work?  I have found that a second burning question is “How can I find a translation that works best for me--the researching scholar, the professor, the student, the casual reader--if I cannot read the original?”

          Even if you does read the language in which an original edition of a work was written, you choose a translation based on the impression the original work left on you.  You choose the signifiers based on the signifieds that registered in your mind when you read the poem.  

          On this topic, another question:  How does an American professor educated in the Arabic language choose an English translation of a Darwish poem that would encourage that same original impression that she felt reading the poem in all of her Literature students?  It really is impossible, as impressions are subjective.  This is because, when we look at signifiers, the signifieds that come to mind are not the same as the person sitting next to you, reading the same work.

         When producing a translation--or when choosing the right translation to teach or to read--it is essential to always keep your future audience in mind.  Whether you audience is a conference of literary scholars specializing in Modernism whose palates are refined to a certain literary style or a high school classroom, academics should both translate and choose translations based on the preferences, the level of learning, and the culture of the people reading, listening, analyzing.

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To help provide insight into how a poem is translated, there are three versions of Neruda's "Puedo escribir/Poema 20" below.  The first is the Spanish-language version, an edition of which I found on the website for la Universidad de Chile.  The second and third are amateur translations I tried, one of which is a rough translation with alternate signifiers in parentheses, the other the "final version," where I sort of tweaked things without having the grounds to do so so that they would just sound better (in my own opinion) in English.  I have not changed any of the punctuation from the Spanish-language edition in my translations, but I have changed some of the word order.