Translation of Poetry: Towards a Practical Model for Translation Analysis and Assessment of Poetic Discourse

Dastjerdi, Hossein Vahid; Hakimshafaaii, Haadi; Jannesaari, Zahra

doi:10.22425/jul.2008.9.1.7

J. Univers. Lang. 2008; 9(1):7-40

pISSN: 1598-6381

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22425/jul.2008.9.1.7

Article

Translation of Poetry: Towards a Practical Model for Translation Analysis and Assessment of Poetic Discourse

Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi¹, Haadi Hakimshafaaii², Zahra Jannesaari³

Author Information & Copyright ▼

¹University of Isfahan

²Bojnord University

³Tehran University

Copyright ⓒ 2016, Sejong University Language Research Institue. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Published Online: Jan 01, 2017

Abstract

Among translation issues, poetry translation is the most problematic area challenging both translators and authorities in the field of translation studies. Translation of poetry as a yet unanalyzed ‘black box’ (Francis 2006) has been a much debated issue since olden times, with many pros and cons and dichotomist reasoning as to its possibility or impossibility. This is due to the high cultural prestige of poetry which requires time, effort and ingenuity to translate traditional rhyme, rhythm structures and the figurative language involved. In the present study, a Persian piece of poetry by the contemporary Iranian poet, Musavi Garmaroodi, A. (1984) and its English translation by Vahid, D. H. (2006) will be focused upon and descriptively analyzed at both linguistic and extra linguistic levels. The aim is to identify the formative elements of versified discourse in the source and target texts (ST/TT) and to arrive at a tentative model of translation analysis which can serve as a measure for translation assessment of poetic genre.

Keywords: translatability; textual analysis; extra-textual analysis; translation assessment; poetic discourse

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