Poetry Translating as Expert Action Processes, priorities and networks

 Poetry Translating as Expert Action

Interest

Networks

Polysystems

Imagined

Communities

Fields

Translating

Agents

Text

Transmitters

Translator

COGNITION

EMOTION

Target

Poem(s)

Source

Poem(s)

Text Complex

Systems

C O M M UNI C A T I O N

R E L A T I O N

A C T I O N

Figure 4. Poetry translating action: A provisional model

The central white circle is the translator as cognitive and emotional subject. Next

to the translator there is the source poem, and the target poem that she or he gen-

erates in a series of ‘versions’ – that is, target-language renderings (preliminary,

intermediate or final) of the source poem.

Dark grey shading marks the first-order network in which the translator, the

source and the target poem operate. This brings in other ‘translating agents’, who

make linguistic decisions about target-poems (Buzelin 2005: 214), the wider ‘text

complex’ (e.g. E’s book of essays) in which the translated poem fits, and ‘text trans-

mitters’ (such as publisher P) who give the text complex a physical ‘transmission

means’ (in our case, a printed book) and bring it to its target readers.