André Lefevere

We have already seen how important the Belgian theorist André Lefevere (1945 – 1996) was to the field of translation studies. Lefevere's Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint published in 1975 showed a pragmatic approach to the issue of translation. He took one poem as the source text – Catullus's sixty-fourth poem – and described seven different methods of translation. These have been mentioned briefly in a lecture before this; let us now look at them more deeply.

• Phonemic translation: It tries to reproduce the sound of the SL in the TL, simultaneously attempting to capture the sense. This is effective in translating onomatopoeic words but can often become very awkward as the meaning gets lost in the process.

• Literal translation: Word-for-word translation that might distort the meaning as well as the stylistic aspects of the original.

• Metrical translation: Translation in which there is an attempt at metrical reproduction. Like literal translation, concentrating on the metre might result in distortion of sense and the overall qualities of the text as a whole.

• Poetry into prose: This can capture the sense, but the poetic qualities tend to get lost.

• Rhymed translation: The translation tries to retain the rhyme scheme and metre of the original. This can end up in very clumsy translation that does no justice to the source text.

• Blank verse translation: The restrictions imposed by metre can distort the text. But Lefevere also notes that this translation can achieve greater degree of accuracy.

• Interpretation: Lefevere discusses versions and imitations under this head. Versions are those in which the substance of the SL text is retained and the form is changed. Imitation is that in which the translator produces a poem that is only marginally related to the SL text. Both are receptor-friendly texts but they acquire that quality at the expense of the original text.

Lefevere himself preferred a translation that would impact the readers like the original with the SL readers. He believed that the translator's task “is precisely to render the source text, the original author's interpretation of a given theme expressed in a number of variations, accessible to readers not familiar with these variations, by replacing the original author's variation with their equivalents in a different language, time place and tradition” (qtd in Gentzler 95).