A Critique Paper on "Ang Suwat sa Sugarol" by Adonis Durado

The source text (Binisaya) and the translated text (English)

Adonis Durado is a multi-awarded Cebuano poet, illustrator, and graphic designer. He was born on August 25, 1975, in Cebu City, Philippines. He is a Fine Arts graduate from the University of San Carlos, Philippines. One of his famous crafts is the poem entitled “Ang Suwat sa Sugarol.” The writer usually uses Cebuano as his medium in writing poems and other masterpieces. According to him, “I invest so much on images and metaphors when I’m writing than playing with sound. I am more of an imagist than a lyric.” He’s trained as a visual artist so most of his works are more on visuals. He added that, he likes balance, harmony, proportion, contrast, etc. These are principles in designing that he always applies when he writes. He wanted all of his crafts will be appreciated not just by those urbanized humanoids but as well as those who are living in the remoter areas. “Suwat sa Sugarol” poem is simply an allegory of life of a gambler. The terms that are usually used in gambling are being utilized there as a mere description of a gambler’s lifestyle, characteristics, and vices. And it was also shown there how a gambler faced his tremendous consequences and own bad karma after all the bad things that he did before.
According to my own observation, you will not understand the ST (source text) if you will translate the text literally in another form of language, simply because, every term that were used by the writer in the ST has a deeper meaning and you have to dig deeper to unleash the hidden meaning. Every line in the TT (translated text) in general, was translated literally that changes the whole meaning that the writer from the ST wanted to convey to his audience. Some of the lines were translated correctly or has the same meaning with the ST but majority of the lines in the text diverted from what is the meaning of the ST is all about. Each words and phrases that were used were literally translated without focusing on the original writer’s authentic meaning in the ST. I firmly suggests that, as a translator, you need first to understand the whole meaning of the ST before translating it because as far as I am concerned, the meaning in the ST when translated was distorted. Do not use literal translation to some sort of poems that are somehow uses a lot of imagery and metaphors because it might have something behind it. Analyze the ST first and instead of word-for-word, translate it using the sense-for-sense.
The TT was somehow translated well but failed to convey the meaning from what the writer wanted to convey in the ST. As for me, when you read and analyze both the ST and the TT, the two texts were two different poems with the same terminologies used. They were not parallel to each other and is somehow far from what Adonis wanted to convey.

References:
http://balakerongdaku.blogspot.com/2008/09/blog-post.html?m=1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonis_Durado