Poetry Translating as Expert Action Processes, priorities and networks

 Poetry Translating as Expert Action

Direct translator

Tanović

versions of Delić versions of Musabegović

Words

Without

Borders

Muse Apprentice

Guild

Figure 10. Ulvija Tanović, career map

The simple graphics, however, conceal complex interactions. Muse Apprentice

Guild presented poetry and prose from various world regions – including a section

Independent Voices from the Balkan States, which included three Bosnian poets

(Delić, Duraković and Mlakić). Some Delić poems were translated by Tanović,

and others by Damir Arsenijević, a Bosnian translator and literature scholar then

based in the UK; the Duraković poems were translated by Amela Simić; and no

translator was cited for Mlakić. Thus Tanović’s work was closely linked to that of

other translators and, indirectly, to other poets.

For Words Without Borders, writers from various countries were asked to

suggest work worth translating into English. Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon

suggested the poet Senadin Musabegović – who lived, like Tanović, in Sarajevo.

In translating his poems, Tanović worked directly with the source poet whilst

entering a virtual community of translators and writers from various languages

and countries.

Figure 11 is the career map of US academic and translator Wayles Browne.

Arrows between projects show how material from one project is recycled in later

projects involving the same translator and poet – a frequent phenomenon in the

survey. For instance, Skenderija’s poems in Browne’s translation first appeared in

the US poetry journal Bookpress; one was reprinted, with other poems, in Balkan

Visions, a special edition of US poetry journal Visions; most of these also appeared

on the poet’s personal website; and all, plus some previously-unpublished transla-

tions, were collected in the US-published book Why The Dwarf Had To Be Shot

(Skenderija 1994, 1995, 2006a, 2008).

Incidentally, Skenderija was living in the Czech Republic and then Canada

when Browne’s translations were published. The fact that Skenderija’s translated

poems have mostly appeared in the USA, therefore, appears due to the agency of

Browne, his main translator.