Translatability of poetry

Translatability as an issue has been much discussed in the context of literary genres. It is popularly believed that it is much more difficult to translate poetry than prose. Literary language is a balance between form and content, and it relies on a hidden network of suggestions; the translator has to be alive to the nuances of the text. It is, as Robert Scholes points out, a complex structural system working within the larger structure of literature as a whole. The translator has to recognize the balance between these often dialectical systems. It is to be noted that the translator is first a reader of the text and then an interpreter.Gayatri Spivak has remarked: “Translation is the most intimate act of reading. I surrender to the text when I translate” (Venuti 398). The translator has to read with care and sensitivity, and note the cultural context in which the text is rooted. To an extent, this reading also involves interpretation.

The translation of verse should ideally be into verse and that is precisely the problem with its translation. Sir John Denham is essentially underscoring this point when he says that “poesie is of so subtle a spirit that in the pouring out of one language into another it will all evaporate...” (qtd in Savory 80). In fact Andre Lefevere categorises seven strategies of translation of poetry – phonemic translation, literal translation, metrical translation, poetry into prose, rhymed translation, blank verse translation and interpretation. Basically a translator resorts to one of these strategies, depending on his/her interpretation of the poem and the choice of component that s/he wants to foreground. If it is an ancient text, the problems increase; the text as well as its language might not have any contemporary significance at all. An old English text like Beowulf is a case in point. The ‘translatability' of the epic is grounded in the decisions made by the translator.