Poetry Translating as Expert Action Processes, priorities and networks

 Poetry Translating as Expert Action

TU588 there’s still quite a few problems, so I

think when we had a heart to brush over

TU589 might be a little bit

TU590 you know, too distant really, but it has

something I like in it

Sometimes the whole poem was evaluated, as in Geoff ’s “I’ve read the poem now,

I think it’s extremely difficult”. Evaluation occasionally assessed translation tools,

such as the thesaurus, and once it judged a potential reader’s reaction, as in Geoff ’s

Dr2/TU411 below.

5.3.5.10 Target readers

Within strategic micro-sequences, translators worked largely according to an in-

tuitive sense of receptor-language appropriacy. Explicit mention of target readers’

needs or knowledge occurred only three times. Hugo feared that target readers

might miss a subtlety lost in the transition from Dutch to English word-order –

that his breath cancelled us out, straw fire set us alight (Line 5) are subordinate

clauses linked to Line 2’s do you remember how. And two translators mentioned

that a target reader might not appreciate how their solutions were trying to reflect

the poem’s real-world inspiration, as in Geoff ’s Draft 2:

TU409 lying there like that in what we

had our possession.

TU410 Which gets closer to the idea of

them having bought something,

TU411 although I doubt whether the reader who

doesn’t know the background will get that.

5.4 Discussion: Cognition, creativity and community

This section links the Toen wij study into the book’s developing model of poetry

translating action. This also enables some of the claims made by Chapter 4’s trans-

lators to be assessed.

5.4.1 Cognition and action

The study sheds most light on the central core of Figure 4’s framework: the transla-

tor subject reading and rewriting a poem.

5.4.1.1 Managing translation processes

The study confirms that translating poems is a slow, painstaking task – slower than

translating in other genres. To tackle this task, translators break it down into

Evaluation Image Dr1/#9

Lexis Dr2/#15

Image Dr2/#15

Evaluation Dr2/#8