Chapter 4. Talks with translators
[...] and he is a bloody sight better at [Source Language] than I am, but I think I am
a bit better poet”. Text helpers also give affective support: in Carl’s words, “if I
didn’t have them, I would feel very lonely”.
Source poets emerged as the ideal text helpers, who could clarify issues which
other informants could not (cf. Smith 1989: 206). Thus Bruce told how a source
poet explained “references to industrial processes which I didn’t understand [and]
that I’d missed, and to black magic and local lore”. Poet-translator relationships
were nearly always described as positive. Interviewees reported none of the disa-
greements mentioned in published accounts – typically where poets insist on close
semantic or formal equivalence at the expense of what translators see as target-
poem quality (e.g. Phillips 2001: 30; Weissbort 2004: 24–34).
However, interviewees claimed not to take the input of other text helpers too
uncritically. One reason is that different informants might disagree: thus Ellen
claims “if you were to ask ten different people, you would get ten different inter-
pretations” of a source item. Alternatively, informants’ input may be inaccurate, as
when a word explained by Derek’s informant as “the yoke on which you carry two
buckets” turned out to mean “dragonfly”.
Carl believed that text helpers’ input should be acknowledged in the published
text: “whenever I get anything published, I mention ‘This is with a little help from
my friends’”. Bruce, however, felt that “the best acknowledgement is to do the
equivalent for someone else”.4.3.6 After publication
One interviewee, Derek, also discussed how the published poems were received.
This appeared crucial to self-image. He reported that it can be emotionally reward-
ing to hear listeners at poetry readings say how much they like a source poet’s work,
since they can only get to know it through the translator’s translations. Negative
reviews, by contrast, can be emotionally crushing: “we can put in [all] these years
[translating a work] and then get swiped off ”. And if such reviews are publicized
among poetry-translator groups, they can cause loss of face with fellow translators.
Derek particularly resented reviewers who condemn translations without knowing
the source language, echoing Fawcett’s finding that literary-translation reviewers
often make “sweeping judgements” with little evidence or rationale (2000: 297).4.4 Discussion: Translators and how they translate poems
The interviewees’ reports further enrich Chapter 2’s provisional framework of po-
etry translators’ action. In contrast to Chapter 3, they focus on translators’ cognitive,