TRANSLATING POETRY
WHAT GETS LOST IN TRANSLATION Robert Frost: “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” As a matter of fact, even if the translator has a profound knowledge in the source language (SL), s/he may never be able to create a perfect replica of the original text. What should be mostly preserved when translating poetry is the “total” effect the text produces in the reader
Images Ezra Pound: “an ‘image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.” It is a putting-into-word of the emotional, intellectual and concrete stuff that we experience in any given moment. An image can engage any of the senses. The translator has to reproduce (as far as possible) the sensory effect of the original text.
Word order and sounds Aesthetic values or poetic truth in a poem are conveyed in word order and sounds, as well as in cognitive sense (logic). These aesthetic values have no independent meaning, but they are correlative with the various types of meaning in the text. The translator must take extreme care in translating (and trying to preserve) the word choice, word order and sounds of the original poem.
The sacrifice of sound As Peter Newmark states, in a significant text semantic truth is cardinal, whilst sound (e.g. alliteration or rhyme) is likely to recede in importance; rhyme is perhaps the most likely factor to “give” – rhyming is difficult and artificial enough in one language, reproducing it is doubly so. In short, if the translator has to make a sacrifice, s/he should sacrifice sound. On the other hand, the translator has to balance where the “beauty” of a poem really lies. If it lies more in sounds rather in meaning, the translator cannot ignore the sound factor.
Cultural differences Words or expressions that contain culturally bound words create certain problems. The social-cultural problems exist in the phrases, clauses, or sentences containing word(s) related to the four major cultural categories, namely: ideas, behaviour, product and ecology. The “ideas” include belief, values, and institution; “behaviour” includes customs or habits; “products” includes art, music, and artifacts; and “ecology” includes flora, fauna, plains, winds and weather. In translating prose fiction the length itself of the text allows the translator to make use of compensation (by introducing some kind of information or effect in other parts of the text), while in translating poetry the translator is usually facing a relatively short and compact text, and therefore s/he must make extreme attention to whatever could get “lost in translation” – forever.
Translation techniques In translating culturally-bound expressions, like in other expressions, a poetic translator may apply one of the following procedures: literal translation (unit-to-unit translation) transference (converting the SL word directly into a TL word by adjusting the alphabets, thus creating or using an already existing loan word) naturalization (when not only the alphabet of the word is adjusted to the TL, but also its pronunciation) cultural equivalent (cultural references that may substitute the ones in the original text) functional equivalent (neutralizing or generalizing the object represented in the text with another, non-culturally-bound object with the same general meaning) description equivalent (substituting the word with a description of the object) classifier (substitution of a generic or super-ordinate term for a TL word) componential analysis (description of the parts of the object) deletion notes and glosses synonymy
Metaphors Metaphor means understanding one thing in terms of another. A metaphor is a figure of speech that constructs an analogy between two things or ideas. The analogy is conveyed by the use of a metaphorical word in place of some other word. Other rhetorical figures of speech achieve their effects via association, comparison or resemblance (e. g. antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy, synecdoche and simile, which are then all considered types of metaphor). Translating metaphors means trying to reproduce the same “link” between “vehicle” (the object represented by the linguistic sign) and “tenor” (its metaphorical meaning). It also means trying to reproduce the same kind of figure of speech – when having to translate a metonymy (by which a large or abstract object/concept is described by an object with which the larger or abstract object/concept is affiliated, or the reverse – a smaller or concrete object/concept represented by something larger or abstract) the translator should use another metonymy, and not a synecdoche (representing the part for the whole, or the reverse).
Differences between cultures Different cultures have different focuses. Some societies are more technical and other less technical. This difference is reflected in the amount of vocabulary which is available to deal with a particular topic. If the SL text originates from a highly technical society it may be much more difficult to translate it into the language of a nontechnical society. The translator should anyway try to preserve the level of “technicality” of the SL text – this is especially true in poetry, where every word is charged with a specific meaning and complex of meanings.
Idioms, phrasal verbs and puns An idiom is an expression peculiar to a language and not readily understandable from its grammatical construction or from the meaning of its parts. Phrasal verbs are combinations of “verb + adverb or preposition or verb” to create different meanings compared to the meaning of the verb – they are largely used in English, and absent in Italian, and this means that the translator should try to find an Italian verb with more or less an equivalent “colloquial” usage. Puns are plays on words which humorously emphasize different meanings or applications. All these ways of expression add further meanings to the “embedded” meaning of words, and must be translated with extreme care by the poetic translator, since poetry is the utmost form of proliferation of meaning.