Chapter 5. Five translators translate
idioms, and polysemous (multiple-meaning) lexis proper (e.g. should ophief be-
come raised up or cancelled out?) – though chunks with a prominent sound
structure also presented challenges. Then macrostructural considerations, i.e.
image/text-world schemata and poetic/stylistic patterns, guide translators’
choices and compromises.
Fourthly, translators also check that the target version’s microstructures of se-
mantic, intrinsic-poetic and stylistic meaning are coherent in terms of its own text
world and intertextual context, and conform to target-culture norms of poetic
quality. This also acts as input to target-version rewriting.
These clusters of processes are rarely separate: they are usually linked, and of-
ten intertwined, aspects of one macro-sequence. Apart perhaps from the first Lex-
is-based cluster, which tends to happen early in a poem’s translating lifetime, they
can also occur in any order, and sometimes in repeated cycles.5.4.1.3 Intrinsic form
In terms of intrinsic poetic form, it was the more semantically and pragmatically
oriented features from Section 3.4.1 which presented the main challenges. Of
these, ambiguous and multiple meanings (as with klopte = beat + was correct) were
particularly hard to solve. Another challenge was that of associative and register-
specific meaning, as with Geoff ’s search for an effective English counterpart for
the suddenness of strovuur (‘straw-fire’). Image and metaphor – especially image- turned out to be one of the translators’ key concerns. And finally, tackling con-
centration of meaning was challenging for translators because it is a feature that
often incorporates several others. Toen wij onze handen over ons hart streken, for
example, introduces the poem’s two characters (the narrator talking to an unspec-
ified companion), describes a loving physical action, evokes a sense of relief, and
alludes to a real-world event not apparent from the Line’s semantics.
Other intrinsic-form features were not ignored, however. Translators paid at-
tention to sound patterns and parallelism (Figure 39). Moreover, many decisions
after the initial literal version can be seen as stylistic, in that they were concerned
with tone and appropriacy. The predominance of Lexis foci, however, particularly
those debating receptor-language near-synonyms (e.g. satisfied vs. pleased vs. con-
tented), implies that style manifests itself largely as lexical choice.
Though the overall focus hierarchy stayed similar from draft to draft, certain
foci become more or less prominent. This reflected changes not so much in tex-
tual problems themselves, but in how they were tackled. Thus analytic work
(e.g. Lexis, Grammar/Discourse) alternated in all drafts with wholist work
(e.g. Image, Feel/Flow), but the latter increased in importance as searches for lexi-
cal equivalents gave way to searches for poetically appropriate text-world counter-
parts. Similarly, Scan micro-sequences gradually increased as the problem-solving