Poetry translation

Poetry translation recreates a poem in another language while negotiating its meaning, form, sound, and cultural associations.

Formal equivalence: A translation approach that prioritizes preserving the source text’s form and structure. It shows how translators can preserve a poem’s architecture even when its wording changes.
Edward FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: A celebrated Victorian English adaptation of quatrains attributed to the Persian poet Omar Khayyám. Its freer reworking illustrates how a translation can become a distinct literary work.
Walter Benjamin: A German philosopher and cultural critic whose essay “The Task of the Translator” examines translation’s relation to language. His account challenges the idea that a translation’s sole purpose is to convey information.
Literal translation: A translation that follows source wording and structure closely, sometimes at the expense of natural expression. Its priorities differ from recreating poetic effects that depend on sound or form.
Dynamic equivalence: A translation approach that seeks a similar effect on the target audience rather than close formal correspondence. It frames the choice to reproduce a poem’s impact instead of its exact structure.
Ezra Pound's Cathay: A 1915 collection of English poems adapted from classical Chinese poetry, largely through earlier translations. Its poems show how translation can pass through several languages and intermediaries.
John Dryden: An English poet and critic who classified translation as metaphrase, paraphrase, or imitation. His categories provide an early vocabulary for the freedoms and constraints of verse translation.
Prose translation: A translation rendered in prose rather than verse, without regular poetic lineation or meter. It can clarify a poem’s sense while setting aside some of its formal effects.
Prosody: The patterns of rhythm, stress, and sound in language, especially in poetry. Differences in stress and rhythm make a poem’s meter difficult to carry across languages.
Arthur Waley: An English sinologist and translator known for influential versions of Chinese and Japanese literature. His translations offer a contrasting approach to rendering Asian verse for English readers.

Linked from 9 pages