Article,
Intercultural Literary Exchange: Translation of Poetry between the 'Self' and the 'Other'
Babel, (November 2013)
DOI: 10.1075/babel.59.4.04jab
Abstract
Poetry is the gem of language and the crystallization of culture. The particular features of poetry make its translation a most difficult task. It requires the translator to be not only competent at the manipulation of language, but also familiar with the source and target cultures. The translation of poetry has been approached differently; some translators attempt to keep the local color of the original culture, while others present a completely different poem resembling an original in the TL. This study considers the long-standing debate in the field of translation concerning whether texts should be fully acculturated into the target system, should retain traces of their foreign origin, or should be somewhere in between. Various points of view have been expressed about these different methods of poetic translation.
