Chapter 6. Translating rhyme and rhythm
Virtually all my semantic-field shifts, therefore, may be classed as creative. Also, all
occurred when I attempted to recreate three types of intrinsic-form feature: idioms,
rhyme and rhythm. Of the three, reactivated idioms were most likely to result in
creative transformations. Rhyme and fixed rhythm did not always provoke creative
transformations: rough lexical equivalents, plus some creative adjustment of word
order, supplied Krik’s Line 12–14 rhyme-pair, for instance. Rhyme and rhythm re-
sulted in more creative transformations overall, however, because they occurred in
every Line of their poem, whereas reactivated idioms occurred in just one Stanza.6.3.6 Team, project and community
Though Krik, as a published project rather than a workshop exercise, had a richer
real-world context than Toen wij, both transcripts reveal little about this context,
focusing instead on translating proper. As with Toen wij, the Krik transcripts con-
tain occasional references to text helpers: while writing the Draft-1 literal, for in-
stance, I said that I would ask E about the meaning of certain source-poem words.
But they do not mention other team members or roles, such as E in his project-
editor capacity, nor Krik’s fit with the rest of the text complex – with the other 39
sonnets, the Translator’s Notes, E’s and my Afterwords, and Berber’s illustrations.
Nor did I refer, while translating Krik, to potential target readers or their percep-
tions – unlike Hugo and Geoff in Toen wij.
Similarly, the Krik protocols fail to mention the project’s strong socio-political
motivation. Nor, as far as I can judge, do Krik’s English versions give textual clues to
my or the project team’s political or cultural assumptions and ideologies – with one
exception. This is my use of reiving in Line 10 of the published version (Figure 45):
a dialect word from the Scots-English borders, where I live, it denotes cross-border
banditry and cattle-rustling in bygone times. I proposed this in Draft 4 or 5, and
then considered deleting it because many English readers might not understand it.
What made me keep it was a wish to stress my Northern-England identity – coupled
with other factors, such as /i:/ and /r/ assonance (a shriek of love, or of reiving), and
because I felt it reflected Kulenović’s etymological richness and obscurity in BCS.6.4 Discussion: Two poems and two projects6.4.1 Cognition and action6.4.1.1 Cognitive habitus and approach
When different translators work on the same poem, as the last chapter showed,
their translating processes – and even, broadly speaking, their translation products