These and other poems (including two poems by Arnaut Daniel, one by Azalais de Porceraiges, one by Pierre Vidal, one by Piere d'Alverne, one by Pierre Cardenal, one by Sordello, two by Jaufre Rudel de Blaye, two by Bernart de Ventadorn, and one by Marcabrun) were originally translated between 1978 and 1980 for my A.B. thesis. I had hoped to translate "Leu Chansonet e vil" as well, and translated several stanzas, but my advisor preferred trobar clu to trobar leu and so the translation was not finished; I later translated the finale but still have work to do on it. I decided I'd add this and three translations in 1990, then left off for other things when the Smithsonian rejected my article on the history. With my health declining, I thought I'd try again.
I decided to translate the trobadors (French "troubadours") after reading a book on the Crusades in 7th grade. I had decided that there must have been women writers at the time too (there always are), and that I'd focus on them (though I did not as one can see; indeed in my final thesis, I only translated two).
In college, besides taking courses in Romance languages, I took courses in verse writing, to prepare me for creating "poetic" translations. Thus I worked on forms such as sonnets, ballad stanzas, villanelles, sapphics, but not sestinas (I started one but was never able to complete it). I have I suppose enjoyed the poetry of a few writers who have lived since the fifteenth century, but very few. Rilke is one. (I also think well of Nicolas Guillen; and then there is Emily Dickinson, and a poem or two by Milton, including "Sampson Agonista;" perhaps also there is Alexander Block, but I have not read him in Russian, so can't say for sure.) But I think the real goal of writing verse today is to convey for a modern audience the great poetry of the 15th century and before. And that indeed is more enjoyable than writing poetry about the present, which some say does not yield to poetry, and perhaps it does not normally do so.
My last year in college, I wrote only one poem of my own, my own history of the campaign of the Count of Foix, and the rest of what I did were translations. Since graduation I've written one or two poems, that's all, and if I do anything else in terms of writing, it will be fiction, perhaps science fiction, with the goal of course of making money, which is what I'd enjoy.
In my translations, I've kept words like "lady" (dompna), "lord" (dons; I actually like by the way Pound's "My-Lord-Her" since the "dons' addressed is presumably actually a "dompna" in many cases), and "worthy" or "worth" (proessa), as well as "knight" (cavaliers), rather than trying to come up with contemporary equivalents: these words are well-understood today and too important to water down with an equivalent. Puns, however, are rarely translatable, and so I try to come up with a pun of my own, perhaps contemporary, in English. (There were a few instances when I tried to "translate" the pun, and I hoped these worked; for example, for "menres de Bornetz un dorn," "less than Bornelh by a fingernail," I simply moved the pun, on the name Ventadorn, to a pun on the name Bornelh/Bornetz: "born a hand's breadth below Bornelh.")
I've shortened the original lines slightly as I think shorter lines are more natural in English (indeed as a child most of my lines were tetrameter; maybe this was the influence of greeting card verse but I hope I did not simply write greeting card verse). Since full rhyme, feminine rhyme is difficult to come by in modern English, I rely largely on half rhymes, internal rhymes, and alliteration, the latter quite natural in English of all periods. I tend to have a slightly prayer-like tone in my translations, which is quite natural to me, and which I think works.