Poetry Translating as Expert Action Processes, priorities and networks

Chapter 4. Talks with translators 

One sub-expertise cited was the ability to produce target-poem rhyme-

schemes, supporting the widely-held view that this requires special skill

(e.g. Barnstone 1984: 50). One translator felt he had this skill, and two translators

felt they lacked it: hence rhyming appears to be an optional expertise within the

poetry translator habitus. For one translator, inability to rhyme meant not trans-

lating rhymed source poems. For another, however, it meant converting rhymed

source poems to unrhymed target poems. This exemplifies the often fierce debate

among poetry translators and critics as to whether rhyme should be exempt from

the norm of reliable representation (see e.g. Lefevere 1975: 49–61; Bly 1983: 44;

Sorrell 2000; Moffett 1989, 1999). This debate apparently takes place only in liter-

ary cultures where norms favour free verse, as with English-language poetry over

the last century or so (Osers 1998: 59–60). This allows some translators to justify

breaching the reliable-representation norm by citing a competing literary norm;

but for others, even in cultures favouring free verse, such a general policy of

breaching the reliable-representation norm (as opposed to unavoidable, one-off

breaches with individual words or phrases) is unacceptable.

4.4.4.2 Self-image and identity

Metacognitive self-awareness also encompasses what might be termed ‘career

identity’ as an expert or professional. This is constructed in part via relations with

one’s peers: thus hostile reviews of one’s translations can hurt both one’s private

self-image and one’s public image as a poetry translator. A poetry translator’s iden-

tity may also involve other elements: the bilingual’s multiple identity, say, as some-

one at home in several cultures (Derek’s multiple “souls”), plus being the enabler

of communication between these cultures

4.4.5 Further interpersonal issues

4.4.5.1 Translating agents

This study has broadened the concept of co-translating to include not only com-

plementary-language co-translating, but also same-expertise and added-value

co-translating. These exploit differences in agents’ language skills, translator per-

sonae, and source-language knowledge/interference respectively. In process terms,

co-translating means not only sharing skills and knowledges, but also interactive-

ly constructing joint skills and knowledges that are more than the sum of each

agent’s input.

4.4.5.2 Recruitment

Recruiting a key actor is an important catalyst for a translation project’s develop-

ment. Two crucial actions are recruiting the translator(s) and the publisher.