Poetry Translating as Expert Action
5.4.4.3 Target readers
Only rarely did translators refer to how target readers might read their final ver-
sion – though, since no publication was planned, there might simply have been
little point doing so. Nevertheless, receptor-language appropriacy conditioned vir-
tually all of their textual solutions. This implies at least some awareness of transla-
tion purpose and users (i.e. skopos), albeit implicit and generalized.5.4.5 System
Translators all mentioned how the source poem relates to the poet’s wider oeuvre,
and how the target version might fit with other original and translated poems in
English. Translators, therefore, are aware whilst translating of the relationship be-
tween their work and wider intertextual systems.5.5 Afterword
This chapter has added further depth and detail to Figure 4’s model of poetry
translation. It has given detailed information about its central core: how the trans-
lating subject reads a poem and rewrites it in another language. It has also explored
some social aspects, further stressing the importance of first-order networks of
text helpers, and arguing that translator habitus is not just a second-order social
agreement, but is also closely linked to translator cognition. The next chapter ex-
amines how far a translator’s processes and strategies might be affected by differ-
ences in intrinsic form between poems.