Poetry Translating as Expert Action
Attitudinally, the high number of recreation-impossible points in poetic text
gives space for translators to make decisions guided by their individual translating
approach. Of course, few translators take completely idiosyncratic decisions. Thus
some approaches point to mutually exclusive but co-existing sub-norms within
the translator habitus – ‘rhyme-recreators’ versus ‘free-versifiers’, for example.
Others point to spectra of practices, where relation norms merely set the limits of
acceptability. One spectrum shows how far translators prioritize source-poem rec-
reation versus target-language effectiveness, within the constraint that at least
some attention must be paid to both aspects. Another spectrum shows what trans-
lators prioritize when they cannot recreate everything effectively – semantics ver-
sus sound, for example. Here, within the constraint discussed earlier, that at least
some semantic correspondence with the source must remain, differences between
translators ranged from the absolute prioritizing of semantics to the view that se-
mantics and sound are equally important.7.2.4.2 Between poems
These studies showed that differences in conventional form between free-verse
and fixed-form poems per se had little effect on overall translating processes, and
relatively little on translation products. This is perhaps surprising in view of the
wealth of discussion by scholar-translators on this issue, and particularly on the
special challenges posed by a source poem’s rhyme and/or rhythm (e.g. Cowley
1656/2006; Cowper 1791/2006; Newman 1856/2006; Lefevere 1975; Bly 1983;
Barnstone 1984: 50–52; Scott 1997; Hejinian 1999). What does appear crucial,
however, is whether a poem has certain ‘high problem potential’ features, since
these can slow down translating processes, or can force translators to choose be-
tween creative and surface-semantics-only solutions, or can do both. This book
identified three such features. One is indeed rhyme – especially end-rhymes on
every Line linked into a formal rhyme-scheme (as in the Kulenović sonnet but not
the Dizdar extract). The second is indeed fixed rhythm. The third – a feature much
less often discussed by poetry translation scholars – is that of reactivated idioms,
where both literal and figurative meanings contribute to the poem’s text world. All
three appear to belong to a larger class of high-problem-potential features: polyse-
mous lexical items where more than one meaning is active. In these features, lin-
guistic form is not only part of the message, but also tends to be language-specific.
Therefore, unlike other devices that activate Jakobson’s poetic, such as alliteration
or vowel rhyme, they often have no obvious target-language counterpart.
How challenging a poem is to translate, therefore, depends on three factors.
One is how many high-problem-potential features it contains. Another is the solv-
ability of each problem, which appears related to the translator’s semantic room
for manoeuvre. One can search for a rhyme word, for example, within and around