Poetry Translating as Expert Action
0.0%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
25.0%
30.0%
35.0%
RHYME
INTERTEXTUALITY
PARALLELISMSOUND (MISC.)TEXT-HELPER
E VALUAT ERHYTHM
SPONTANEOUS CHANGE
GRAM/DISCFEEL/FLOW
SCANIMAGELEXIS
Percentage of tape-units
Francis "toen wij" Francis "Krik"
Figure 51. Percentage of tape-units per focus (all drafts combined): Toen wij vs. Krik
with a correlation coefficient of 0.74^8. The types of problem I tackled in the two
poems, therefore, were broadly similar. Nevertheless, 0.74 is not a perfect correla-
tion: hence it is worth looking at the profiles more closely.
Key similarities between the profiles are: firstly, the importance of Lexis,
though its prominence decreases slightly from Toen wij (28.5%) to Krik (23.8%);
and secondly, the time spent on Grammar/Discourse (Toen wij 7.5%, Krik 8.8%).
With two poems that present similar challenges in building a coherent text world
from obscure or ambiguous lexico-grammatical cues, therefore, differences be-
tween Dutch and BCS in terms of lexico-grammatical cognacy to the target lan-
guage have not affected the overall translation-problem profile.
As for key differences, understanding the source poem and evaluating possi-
ble solutions in terms of Image took first place with my Toen wij (34.6%). With
Krik, however, it took second place (19.5%) – almost certainly because my decision
- Pearson r (tape-units per focus), p 0.02.