Poetry Translating as Expert Action Processes, priorities and networks

Chapter 4. Talks with translators 

4.3.3 Translating processes

4.3.3.1 Drafting and drawer time

All interviewees reported three or four separate drafts per poem, again echoing

translators’ published reports, with each draft often involving several ‘runs-

through’ of the poem (Shih 2006: 303). Less often cited in published reports,

though mentioned by these interviewees, is the crucial “time in the drawer”

between drafts (Shih ibid.; Born 1993). This allows translators to forget the source-

poem microstructures and thus to judge the version “on its own in English” (Alan).

Preferred drawer time between first and second drafts varied between Carl’s over-

night and Alan’s “at least a week”, suggesting that cognitive-processing differences

between translators (in particular, translating speed: p. 93 below) may play a role.

Alan adds that a “long time for second thoughts, I mean a year or whatever” may

be needed before a translator feels that a translation is finally publishable.

What translators reported doing in each draft varied according to personal

cognitive-processing variables, to their beliefs and priorities regarding the source-

target poem relationship, and to how far their work involved other translating

agents, as explained in the following sections.

4.3.3.2 Cognitive orientation

Riding and Rayner define ‘cognitive style’ as an individual’s preferred mode of

processing information (1998); here, this is termed ‘cognitive orientation’, to avoid

confusion with ‘style’ as distinctive poetic voice. The main dimension emerging

from their survey of research (ibid.: 19–39) is a continuum between a preference

for “analytic” and for “wholist”^5 processing. This distinguishes sharply between

this study’s translators: see Figure 17. Analytic processors lessen the cognitive load

of translating poetry by dealing with one detail in working memory at a time.

Thus Derek and Ellen reported breaking down (‘analysing’, in cognitive terms)

source poems into individual microstructures, and then finding receptor-language

counterparts for each microstructure – by annotating source poems for vocabu-

lary or poetic features, say, and then focusing on vocabulary or rhythm patterns in

early versions.

Analytic Wholist

Derek Ellen Alan Bruce Carl

Figure 17. Cognitive-Orientation Continuum

5. Riding and Rayner distinguish between “wholist” as an overarching concept, and “holist”
   as one of the various labels assigned to it by researchers (28–31, after Pask and Scott).