chapter 5
Five translators translate
5.1 Introduction: Researching real-time processes
Chapters 5 and 6 report on five translators’ real-time processes, problem-solving
strategies and textual shifts whilst working on two poems. They give detailed data
about specific working practices, thus complementing the whole-person, whole-
career insights of Chapter 4, but also allowing some of the Chapter 4 interviewees’
claims to be checked. They address the following detailed questions:
- How do poetry translators manage their task? How do they construct knowl-
edge macrostructures and microstructures about a poem, and use these to
shape their emerging target poems? What proportion of time do they spend
on various linguistic, poetic and interpersonal issues? - How far do translators try to recreate the source poem’s semantics, imagery
and allusions? Its word-play and ambiguity? Its sound structures? - Do any of the translators creatively depart from source-poem forms and struc-
tures? If so, is this part of a wider adaptation/imitation approach, and/or a way
of solving local problems (as claimed by some of Chapter 4’s translators)? - Is there evidence of the cognitive continua proposed in Chapter 4? If so, what
positions do the new translators take up on these continua?
These questions are tackled via two think-aloud studies. Chapter 5’s recordings
show five translators, including myself, translating a recent Dutch free-form poem
(Toen wij) into English. This contains wordplay and ‘reactivated’ idioms, where
both the literal and the figurative meaning are active. Chapter 6’s recordings show
myself translating a 20th-century BCS sonnet (Krik), with a strict rhyme and
rhythm pattern, into English. Features common to both poems are the use of as-
sonance and grammatical ambiguity, and that their text worlds are internally co-
herent but lack any obvious motivational or narrative context.
Though the Krik recordings were gathered before the Toen wij recordings,
they are reported in the opposite order for methodological reasons. Chapter 5 es-
tablishes what features the five Toen wij translators share and where they differ,
thus also showing how far my translating processes are typical of my peers. Be-
cause both chapters use the same data-gathering and analysis methods, Chapter 6
can then discuss how far my experience of tackling Krik’s specific features might
also be typical of my peers.