Poetry Translating as Expert Action
figures, for instance. Underlying this, there is often the wider motive of conveying
a certain vision of the source culture to receptor-culture readers, or even to source-
language readers.
Whatever their motives, therefore, the teams and translators presented in this
book seem largely driven by the ‘intercultural ambassadorship’ paradigm of trans-
lation (pp 47–48). Occasionally, however, project motives incorporated the ‘inter-
community power-play’ and ‘glocalized hybridity’ paradigms: for instance, Chap-
ter 2’s essay collection (which sought to influence receptor countries’
socio-political attitudes towards the source country) and translation anthologies
from multiple source languages respectively. All three cases echo Pym’s observa-
tion that the “situational geometry” of discussions between a translator and other
players about the translating process spans both sides of a language border, thus
“annulling the function of the border as a barrier” and centring the translator’s
“cultural identity” on “the overlaps of cultures” (2003: 453, 457). To this, one
should add that other team players might also claim such a (trans)cultural identity,
such as an anthology editor with strong allegiance to both cultures. Nevertheless,
Pym continues, the translated text “constructs a frontier” between itself, which its
intended readers can understand, and an implied source text, which they cannot
(453). To this, one should add that poetry translators may also provide frontier-
crossing points: a translator’s introduction and notes which explain the relation-
ships between source and target poems, for example.
The space of a project’s operation, and the spatial allegiances of its team mem-
bers, may also reflect its surface and underlying motives. Typically, some of a
team’s members are drawn from both the source and some from the receptor
country. Some team members, however – especially, but not only, translators –
have an allegiance to both cultures, because they are source-culture players living
in target-culture diaspora, or receptor-culture players who identify emotionally
with the source culture. Though evidence for this claim is based mainly on Bos-
nian-English translation, my experience of translating from Dutch and Hungarian
suggests that it is also the rule rather than the exception for other language pairs.
The action and team make-up of many poetry-translation projects, therefore,
favour the glocalized-hybridity paradigm of translation. Chapter 3 in particular
showed teams and translated text complexes to be embedded in at least two cultures
and two systems of cultural politics, and in the interactions between them (cf. Tymoczko
2003: 198–200). This implies that the intercultural ambassadorship and glocalized
hybridity paradigms are actually complementary, with the former describing a team’s
typical motives, and the latter a team’s typical structure and identity.
Projects, however, rarely operate alone. Hence a poetry translation project
must be seen in relation to others in the same sub-system, and its team’s motives
and action must be seen in relation to those of neighbouring teams in the same