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Beyza Aslıhan Güngör
TR111: Rhetoric and Composition for Translators
Dr. Jan Butts
9 December 2022
Destruction of the Nature of Poetry
Among all literary genres, poetry is perhaps the most complicated and the most
controversial one because it is hard to define what is poetry and what are the characteristics of
poetry. Some translation studies researchers define poetry as “an artistic production of language,
aesthetics, the branch of philosophy dealing with beauty” (Kharmandar & Karimnia, 2013, p. 584).
Even from this definition, it can be seen how the concept of poetry is arbitrary, and not stable.
Being “aesthetic” and “dealing with beauty” vary from person to person as everyone’s
understanding of aesthetics and beauty is naturally different. Although it is commonly accepted
that poetry translation is difficult and has some serious issues, majority of people does not think
that poetry translation should not be done because the translations can be pleasant and enjoyable,
as well; thus, the readers from other cultures should not be deprived of this experience. So, while
even the concept of poetry is this much arbitrary and subjective, translators do translate poems
very commonly and people read them pleasantly; however, I think that poetry translation should
not be done because it destroys the nature of the poems, and the experience of the reader becomes
irrelevant from the original text. When the reader reads a translated poem, it does not have the
same effect with the original text, but the translated poem becomes a whole different product of
the translator.
When a poem is read by various readers, they all interpret it differently depending on their
social, ethnic, and psychological backgrounds and even depending on their current emotions and
mindsets. Compared to the other literary genres, poetry is probably the most subjective one
because “…no poet has ever made a poem for himself or herself alone. Poems are made only for
audiences.” (Owen, 1990, p. 28). It is more possible to extract the same or similar message from
for example a novel but even the most obvious-looking poems carry hidden meanings and thus, it
has endless possibilities of interpretations. In addition, poetry is one of the most proper genres to
play with the vocabulary, syntax, and sentence structures of the language. This situation creates a
problem because most of the time, the structure and the form of the poem crucially contribute to
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the meaning and the message of the poem. For example, there is a poem called “Swan and Shadow”
by John Hollander. Hollander chose and put words in such order that the poem is constructed in
the shape of a swan and its shadow. When a translator wants to translate this poem into another
language, they should find proper words to fit not only the meaning of the poem but also the shape
of the poem; for instance, they cannot choose long words in the first and the last parts of the poem
because then they would not be able to create the swan image. They could divide the words into
lines, but then the possible interpretations of the poem can change because even a dot is so effective
while trying to make sense of any poem, so the target language’s readers may interpret the divided
lines differently.
On the other hand, even if the translator manages to keep the structure and the form of the
poem the same, or sufficiently similar; the biggest issue of poetry translation is transferring the
meaning of the poem. Even when the source language’s readers are most probably understanding
very different meanings from one particular poem, it is hard to talk about transferring the poem’s
message to the target language’s readers without changing it -intentionally or unintentionally. It
can be argued that if the poem is left to the audience to understand however they like, then the
target language’s readers can understand whatever they want, too. But the problem is the creating
process of the poem because the poet writes a poem according to their native language’s structure
and cultural motivations. Thus, the translator transfers the poem to the target language one way or
another. At the end of the translation process, the new product becomes a whole different poem
that belongs to the translator rather than the poet. Because there are two possible methods a
translator can follow: first, they can translate the poem literally, word-for-word, and leave the
interpretation completely to the audience, or second, they can translate the poem according to their
own interpretation. This division may seem too superficial but when one thinks about the process
of the interpretation of a poem, there are not many alternatives. If the translator wants to transfer
the “effect” of the poem to the target audience, they should eventually come up with one
interpretation of the poem among many because there is no way a poem has only one and unique
interpretation that is comprehended by each and every reader. Moreover, if the translator does not
want to apply this, then they should translate everything literally without considering their personal
interpretations. The first method’s problem is that word-for-word translation may not make sense
in the target language and the target audience may not understand a thing from the poetry and thus
they would not enjoy it at all. On the other side, the second method’s problem is that when the
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translator translates the poem according to their own interpretation, the poet’s effect disappears,
and the translated poem becomes the production of the translator rather than the poet’s.
In conclusion, although most of the translators think that poetry translation is possible and
is done commonly, I think that it should not be done due to the nature of poetry. Similarly, an
academic instructor named Ovidiu Matiu says that “Great poetry cannot survive the process of
translation, namely it cannot preserve all its initial qualities after having been translated.
Surprisingly enough, this is not due to the difficulty of translating the metrical pattern, but to the
nature of poetry itself.” (Matiu, p.1). Thus, the translated poem becomes a completely different
product that belongs to the translator rather than the poet and it loses all its poetic qualities which
have been aimed by the poet during the writing process.
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References
Kharmandar, M. A., & Karimnia, A. (2013). The Fundamentals of Constructing a Hermeneutical
Model for Poetry Translation. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 580-591.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.01.096
Matiu, O. (n.d.). Translating Poetry: Contemporary Theories and Hypotheses. sc.upt.ro.
Retrieved December 7, 2022, from
https://sc.upt.ro/images/cwattachments/113_86e8b51399d8007606d14eaa41d8cad4.pdf
Owen, S. (1990). What is World Poetry?. The New Republic, 19, 28-32.