What makes it possible to translate?

 Learning four different languages, what I realized is that you cannot replace with a word in one language with a word in another language.

I like explaining with this concept with turkey. If you say Turkey in English, American people could remind gravy sauce and mashed potato, thanksgiving, meal you have with your family, etc. Turkey is called 七面鳥, but this word cannot make Japanese people remind of anything above. They would just recall a image of gigantic bird, or big chicken meats. Even though those two words are indicating the same animal, but since the cultural basis that two languages share are different,  they are not read the same by the readers. 

In the same context, I believe it is not possible to keep the entire context exactly same while translating. It will be hard even if the author tries to do it unless he can speak many languages in certain fluency. 

I would not deny it is hard to translate poetry. I did try to translate poetry for many times. Yes, it is difficult to describe convey the same scenery to the ones who grew up in different cultural background. I just want to ask what makes it impossible. If anyone would like to say it is impossible to translate poetry because you cannot convey the whole context, I'd ask back if doing the same thing is possible for any kind of text. If one says the translator's own interpretations, feelings, and appreciations will be included, I'd ask what makes the different from the other texts? Rhymes, sounds, implications, homonyms, yes, they matters, but they originally matters while translating. 

Getting back to the original topic, is it possible to translate poetry? I'd say yes. I believe the basic principle does not change, and what the translator should do is to write a text that arouse same scenery as the original text do, just like translating the other texts.

Hyungsoo