Poetry Translating as Expert Action
Dr1/#6 (Figure 25: TU100–107), Fleur debates whether she should translate hing
om ons heen literally as hung around us. This reminds her of phrases in other Kou-
wenaar poems (Intertextuality Dr1/#1: TU102–105) like trekt zijn omtrek af (‘pulls
off his outline’), which complicates her choice of solutions (“oh my goodness”).
What links these phrases is “that he’s inside the situation” (Image Dr1/#1: TU103–
106). Whether because of or despite these considerations, she wraps up the Lexis
Dr1/#6 problem (“anyway”: TU107) by keeping her initial solution.
Using the above analysis scheme, translating time and translators’ priorities
were quantified and statistically analysed. Translators, of course, manage tasks in
fuzzy rather than exact ways (Dancette and Ménard 1996: 150): hence drawing
boundaries between levels and assigning focus tags can sometimes involve fuzzy,
intuitive judgements (ibid.). Two raters, however, cross-checked each other’s cod-
ing on all the Toen wij protocols and a sample of the Krik protocols, agreeing most
of the time; and the dataset is so large that any fuzziness of coding should not af-
fect overall findings. Anyway, statistics is only half the story: in the findings below,
the quantitative skeleton is fleshed out with qualitative insights.5.3 Findings: How the Toen wij translators translated
This section follows the levels framework outlined above, from broadest to tightest
in scope – beginning with whole-task issues.5.3.1 Task time
Striking, firstly, is how much time poetry translating takes, even allowing for
think-alouds slowing processes down slightly. On average, translators spent 2h
16m translating and revising this 86-word source text. This is the equivalent of
305 words per 8-hour working day – well below the 1000–3000 words per day
considered normal by professional non-literary translators^5.
There is inevitable variation between translators, ranging from Hugo’s 1h 45m
to Fleur’s 2h 50m, but this is not statistically significant^6. Moreover, this variation
may be even less than tape-times indicate: Hugo, with the lowest tape-time, had an
unprompted and unrecorded extra draft between Drafts 1 and 2; and Geoff, with
the second lowest time, said that he would have done “at least four or five intensive
drafts” if this project had been intended for publication.- See, for example, the thread at http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/MegaBBS/thread-view.
asp?threadid=4882&messageid=61298, visited September 2010. - Repeated-measures ANOVA (tape-units per draft) F 0.64, p 0.65.