Poetry Translating as Expert Action
imply a reactivated idiom in the next, whereas rhyme and rhythm is usually a fea-
ture of a whole poem, and hence presents a recurring set of challenges.
Rhyme and/or rhythm are popularly seen as archetypal features of poetry in
many cultures: hence the difficulties faced by poetry translators in reconciling
rhyme and rhythm with semantics are widely known. Scholars and translators
echo this, reporting how an initial choice to recreate rhyme and rhythm restricts
later choices at the level of syntax and lexis, and gives a sharp increase in time
spent finding solutions (Terry 1984: 55; Holmes 1988: 50). This is particularly the
case when translating into a language with a relatively fixed word-order, like Eng-
lish (Osers 1996: 468–469) – which makes it harder to shift a potential rhyme word
from the middle to the end of a line, say.
The difficulties caused by reactivated idioms in poetry translating are less well
known and less widely discussed, almost certainly because reactivated idioms occur
in fewer poems. ‘Void idioms’, however, where source-text idioms have no target-
language equivalent with a similar literal and figurative meaning, can present even
prose translators with considerable challenges (Tirkkonen-Condit 2002a: 115). In
prose, void idioms are often used only in their figurative sense, giving the option of
recreating the figurative meaning only – translating het klopte as that was right, for
instance. With reactivated idioms, however, this is not possible, because they play
with the tension between the words’ literal and figurative meaning – and for transla-
tors in a variety of genres, translating word-play (a common instance of Jakobson’s
poetic) is notoriously difficult. The experience of most Toen wij translators con-
firmed this. It also confirmed, however, that the sheer density of meaningful fea-
tures typical of poetry could make an already tricky reactivated-idiom problem
even more complex: in this case, that Stanza I involved three reactivated idioms that
were linked into a single image, thus restricting each other’s potential solutions.6.4.1.3 Processes
In process terms, different features exploiting Jakobson’s poetic (reactivated idi-
oms and rhyme pairs, for instance) are tackled in similar ways. Firstly, the source
poem’s semantics are laid down in a literal version, giving a baseline against which
to gauge any semantic changes suggested later. Subsequent versions bring in Ja-
kobson’s-poetic features along with other intrinsic-form features (as listed on
p. 30ff ). This follows a process of generating, testing, and accepting or rejecting
solutions while toggling regularly between a focus on poetic features, on style and
on semantics – or, especially later, while considering them simultaneously and
intuitively. Similar processes of balancing loyalty to these various aspects of poetic
message across drafts and runs-through are reported by Bly (1983: 13–49), Born
(1993) and Oppenheimer (1996). The greater the potential conflict between po-
etic features, style and semantics, of course, the longer this stage is likely to last.