Poetry Translating as Expert Action
more active strategy for circumventing fixations whilst translating, according to
Kussmaul (2005: 389), is to visualise the scene in question. This could be one pur-
pose of Image sequences: enabling translators to side-step the cognitive domi-
nance of word-for-word equivalents by ‘seeing’ the underlying text-world scene
and then wording it in the receptor language.
Popularly, creativity often involves non-rational inspiration. Thus Heiden de-
fines creative problem-solving, quoting Funke, as “production of a new, [...] useful
product which cannot be generated by application of routine procedures”, and sees
it as stepping in where “analytic, formal-logic-based, rational and conventional
thought processes” and “research work” have failed^23. By these process-based cri-
teria, only this study’s intuitive Feel/Flow foci would be potentially creative. Feel/
Flow, however, form a very small proportion of overall sequences, and they gener-
ated relatively few creative adjustments and no creative transformations. Con-
versely, creative adjustments and transformations often resulted from processes
that Heiden excludes, such as dictionary research or thinking rationally about the
source poem’s inspiration. Creative outcomes, therefore, appear more often to be a
product of rational than of non-rational processes.5.4.2 Emotion
This study’s recordings captured very little emotional content, and most of this
consisted of affective evaluations of translation solutions. Therefore, though earlier
chapters have shown how emotion can influence whether a project is undertaken
and continued, it seems to play a minor role in translating itself – except as input
to acceptability judgements.5.4.3 Te a m
The workshop participants decided not to publish their translations, so first-order
relationships in this study were restricted to those between translating agents. The
study confirms the importance of source-poem informants and target-poem advi-
sors in poetry translating, with all translators using one or both types of helper.
The source poet gave crucial informant input about the poem’s real-world
context, enriching the text world which the translators had constructed from their
reading. When translators referred to the text world while seeking translation- “das Hervorbringen eines [...] neuen Produkts, das nicht durch Anwendung von Routine
verfahren zu erzeugen ist”; “[Übersetzungsprobleme meistern, die nicht nach] analytischen,
formal-logischen, rationalen und konventionellen Denkprozessen [ablaufen und auch nach er-
folgter] Recherchierarbeit [... nicht lösbar sind]” (2005: 449–450).