chapter 2
Poetry in a political preface
2.1 Foreword
This chapter assembles a provisional map of poetry translating to guide later chap-
ters’ explorations. It is based on a case study of how I translated a poetry quotation
whilst language-editing a collection of translated essays. There are two reasons for
using my own practice to build a theoretical map. Firstly, it is crucial that theory-
building is rooted in the messy richness of real-world translating. Secondly, it says
more about ‘where I am coming from’ as a translator and researcher, enabling
readers to contextualise this book’s research studies.
Two other methodological points are worth making. Firstly, I refer to people I
worked with by role (e.g. ‘Translator T1’), not name. Because the texts have since
been published, however, some names can be back-tracked via title pages, bibliog-
raphies, etc. As full anonymity is not possible, I have followed another research-
ethics principle, that of avoiding harm to participants, and asked key participants
to approve this report before publication (De Vaus 2001: passim). Though only
Essayist E replied, as the project’s central actor he confirmed my analysis. Rather
than compromising my objectivity as a researcher, I feel that this lessens the risk
that the data might reflect only my personal viewpoint.
Secondly, every research act in this study, even naming its source language, is
potentially political. When Bosnia (officially, ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina’), Croatia,
Montenegro and Serbia were component republike of the Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia, the mutually intelligible cluster of language varieties that formed
most of their people’s mother tongue was officially called Serbo-Croatian. During
Yugoslavia’s long break-up, these republike became independent states (see Figure 1).
Nowadays, most users call their language Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin or Ser-
bian, depending on which state they feel allegiance to. But even my preferred label,
‘Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian’ (BCS), reveals a political stance – seeing the ex-Yugoslav
region as a single but non-homogenous linguistic and cultural space.
As for BCS pronunciation, c is pronounced /ts/; ć /t./ and č /tw/ resemble
English ch; đ /dŒ/ resembles UK English due; g /g/ is pronounced as in English gag;
j /j/ is like English consonantal y, š /w/ like English sh, and ž /Š/ like the s in pleasure.
Other consonants have similar values as in English, and the vowels (a e i o u) are
close to their International Phonetic Alphabet values.