Notes on poetry, translation and culture (original) (raw)

Translating Poetry. Contemporary Theories and Hypotheses

2008

Few writers depend so heavily on the intricacies of a given language as the poet, for whom each word is often essential. We can find examples of fine poetry in all cultures, poetry rich in the demeanour and presence of language, filled with the richness that makes a language unique and interesting. Some would argue that without the variance found in· dissimilar languages poetry, would fail us as a comprehensive art; could we have the peculiar grammar of Emily Dickinson beside the lyricism of Baudelaire if both poets were constrained to use the same language? Great poetry cannot survive the process of translation, namely it cannot preserve alf its initial qualities after having been translated. Surprisingly enough, this is not due to the difficulty of translating the metrical pattern, but to the nature of poetry itself. The usefulness of the debate on translating is that it compels us to look more critically at the task of the poet and the function of poetry. Poetry is neither just w...

Poetry – Challenges of Untranslatability

2014

Translating a literary work is a very difficult task because of its relevant aesthetic and expressive values. The aesthetic values reflect the beauty of the writer’s figurative language. The expressive values reflect the writer’s thoughts and emotions. Hence, the translator must focus on transferring such values from the source language into the target language. As a separate genre of literature, poetry has something that makes it different from the others. Thus, the beauty of a poem does not result from diction, as is the case with novels and short stories, but also from rhythm, rhyme, meter, and particular expressions and structures, which may not match with those of the daily language user. In a word, translating of poetry much more attention and hard work than translating other literary genres. Through this paper, we aim to present some brief considerations about poetry translation, and offer certain considerations related to the procedure stages of translating a poem.

Translating Poetry: Possibility or Impossibility?

Journal of College of Education for Women, 2019

Translating poetry is considered one of the most complicated types of translations. It encounters many difficulties, the most important of which is the question of possibility or impossibility of translating poetry. So, it is better to start by asking the following question: is the translation of poetry possible? Or is it impossible? It is definitely a rhetorical question because translation is as old as the presence of translated texts, which fills the shelves of libraries. One can ask despite these difficulties, who would discourage people of the world from translating poetry merely because it is fundamentally impossible? (Mann, 1970: 211) The present paper will elaborate, in more detail, upon the necessary traits of translation and poetry, and will seek the intellectual attitudes that deal with the issue of the possibility or impossibility of translating poetry by representing the views with or against the translation of poetry, as well as shedding some light on the problematic i...

A Poem in Translation is a Poem in Transition...!

Abstract: A poem in translation goes through various changes! The article tries to explain and analyze the factors, which affect the process of translation. Bringing poem from a source language to target language is influenced by key factors like Tradition and History of the Literature, Poet, Medium (Language) and Translator. How each factor plays an important role while a poem is being conceived and later on expressed is also explained in the article. Similarly, when the process of translation initiates how these factors become a challenge for the translator is emphasized followed by the analysis of the role of the translator. The „uniqueness‟ of the poem created due to these factors is also discussed in the article which subsequently emerge as fundamental questions for the translator with an expectation for an answer. However, the product of translation is not discussed much in the article, as the focus of the article is the process of translation of a poem. Keywords:

Modern Poetry in Translation

New Quarterly Cave, 1976

In this article, Daalder discusses the issue of reading Continental European literary works in translation. Daalder explains that when he reads these works in English, he reads them like an Englishman - the more so because his whole sense of history and culture is by now almost totally English - despite the fact that he is from the Netherlands originally. When it comes to poetry, Daalder tends to judge from an English framework of reference; but at the same time he realizes, when he turns to continental poets, that this attitude will not do.

Problems in Translating Poetry

Retrieved December, 2003

Basically, poetry translation should be semantic translation for a poem is typically rich with aesthetic and expressive values. The translator may face the linguistic, literary and aesthetic, and socio-cultural problems in translating it. The linguistic problems include the collocation and obscured syntactic structure. The aesthetic and literary problems are related with poetic structure, metaphorical expressions, and sounds. While the sociocultural problems arise when the translator translates expressions containing the four major cultural categories: ideas, ecology, behavior, and products. This article shows some basic considerations on how to solve them.

Cultural Dimensions of Poetry Translation

The present research analyses Hungarian and English targetlanguage translations of contemporary Finnish poems. The translation solutions of culturally-bound lexical elements are compared in both Finnish-Hungarian and Finnish-English translation directions. The analysis is carried out using a text corpus comprising Hungarian and English translations of Finnish poems published after 1950. The text corpus consists of 160 Finnish source poems and their 160 Hungarian and 160 English target-language translations. The objective of the research is to reveal the cultural aspects of the translation of poetry and to answer the question as to what types of translation solutions literary translators use when translating culturally-bound lexical elements in Finnish poems into Hungarian and English. Results show that English-language translators of contemporary Finnish poems more frequently use translation solutions which are less creative and do not stray far from the original source language text. Hungarian translators, on the other hand, are more courageous in deviating from the source text and adapting their translations to the target language. This can be explained by reference to the two translation contexts or as a result of genre-specific reasons.

Transcreating Subjectivity: Retaining the Legacy of Poetry in Translation.

Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile as opined by J.H. Miller. Even though translation studies is a recent development as a discipline, translation is as old as language and literature. It is as old as original authorship and has a long history as any other branch of literature. The history of translation focuses on the theory of translation or on the practice of translation or on both theory and practice of translation. Though there were tendencies to view translation as secondary to creative writing, translation grew itself as a new literary genre. The Elizabethan English translator entered creatively into his work as an artist of creative genius. Finally, he came up with a work of intense loveliness and heightened dramatic pitch unsuggested by the original. To him, the notion of ‘exact translation’ was quite irrelevant. The dilemma he faced was one of keeping a balance between the letter and the spirit of the original.