Poetry Translating as Expert Action
So far I have only described declarative knowledge, or ‘knowing what’: state-
able facts such as knowledge about medieval Bosnian heresy (J. R. Anderson 1995:
234–235). Translating, however, also involves procedural knowledge (ibid.). This
is ‘knowing how to’, i.e. having the ready-to-use action plans known as procedures
or skills.
Several types of translating procedure have been identified by researchers.
One is the strategy. This involves deliberately using skills to solve a problem or
reach an objective (Jääskeläinen 2005; cf. Lörscher 1996) – what Mondahl and
Jensen (1996: 101) call a “problem-solving sequence”.^5 Strategies are hierarchical
and nesting (Hönig 1991: 80; Jones 2006b). The whole-text sequence solving the
problem of a poem that needs first-draft translating or revising is divided into
medium-level problem → solution sequences – here, called ‘macro-sequences’. Of-
ten based on syntactic or orthographic units, these are just small enough to be held
as wholes in working memory (Gerloff 1987) – such as a clause or phrase, a half-
line or a verse’s rhyme scheme. Low-level strategies, here called ‘strategic micro-
sequences’, are then applied to solve the various problems within each macro-se-
quence. For example, my revision of the example poem began with a macro-sequence
revising Line 1 for poetic effectiveness. This involved three successive low-level
strategies: seeking a synonym for Version 1’s skilful [as a spy from the West] that
gave an internal rhyme with another item, and finding sly; compressing spy from
t h e We s t into Western spy, which also strengthened the stress on spy; and finally,
after attempting to stress the rather weak poem opening And sly [as a Western spy]
by changing the word-order, expanding sly into Secret and sly [as a Western spy].
Besides ‘strategic’ micro-sequences, a macro-sequence may also contain ‘non-
strategic’ micro-sequences: procedures which do not deliberately apply skills to solve
an identified problem (see below and Figure 27, p. 117). For example, a ‘spontane-
ous change’ (cf. Mondahl and Jensen 1996: 102; Hönig: ibid.) involves ‘automatized’,
non-conscious processing – as when I recognised the meaning of sa zapada and
immediately wrote its literal equivalent from the West in my first version of Line 1.
Another class of procedures, shifts or techniques, looks at how far the translator
changes a source-text item’s form and/or content (Munday 2001: 55–71; Fawcett;
1997). Converting Line 1’s uhoda sa zapada (‘spy from West’) into Western spy is a
‘transposition’ shift: changing an item’s grammar without changing its meaning.
Finally, approach is the general procedural principle underlying the shifts used
in a whole text, or favoured by a translator (Baker 1998: passim). An example is my
aim of producing an effective English poem that keeps as many source-poem fea-
tures as possible.- It should be noted that other translation scholars use ‘strategy’ to refer to either ‘shift/tech-
nique’ or ‘approach’ as defined below.