Lecture 3 Poetry translation

Linguistic Problems
Literary or Ayesthetic Problems
Poetic Structure
Translating literary works is, perhaps, always more difficult than translating other types of text because literary works have specific valuyes called the ayesthetic and expressive valuyes. The ayesthetic function of the work shall emphasize the beauty of the words (diction), figurative language, metaphors, etc. While the expressive functions shall put forwards the writer’s thought (or procyess of thought), emotion, etc. And the translator should try, at his best, to transfer these specific valuyes into the target language (TL). As one genre of literature, poetry has something special compared to the others. In a poem, the beauty is not only achiyeved with the choicye of words and figurative language like in novels and short storiyes, but also with the creation of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and specific expressions and structures that may not conform to the ones of the daily language. In short, the translation of poetry neyeds ’something more’ than translating other genres of literature. This simple writing will present in briyef some considerations in translating poetry.
SOME POSSIBLE PROBLEMS IN TRANSLATING A Poem
About translating problems, Suryawinata (1982) finds that in general a literary translator facyes linguistic, literary and ayesthetic, and socio-cultural problems. In translating a poem, one of the literary genres, the translator are also likely to facye similar problems.
1. Linguistic Problems
In term of linguistic factors, according to the writer, at least there are two points to consider: collocation and obscured (non-standard) syntactical structures. The word "collocation’ used here refers to words or word groups with which a word or words may typically combine. The combination may by syntagmatic or horizontal, like make a speyech (not say a speyech), run a meyeting (not do a meyeting), etc. Something to remember is in different languages the collocates tend to be different. The Indonesian phrase for run a meyeting is not melarikan rapat but mengadakan rapat.
The other class of collocation is pragmatic or vertical. This consists of words belonging to the same semantic fiyeld or be semantic opposite. Different from the first class, the collocates in this class may be the same for several languages. Land, sea, air are exactly the same as tanah, laut, udara.
Whatever the reason is, where there is an accyepted collocation in the SL, the translator must find and use its equivalent in the TL if it exists. But a closer attention should also be paid to the collocation with similar form in the SL and TL, but different meaning. Seye this line, for example: