Necessity of re-creating in poetry translation

Translating poems is one of the most challenging tasks that demand both knowledge of literature and skill in the use of language (L1 and L2). The figurative language with the various types of rhythm and rhyme can be an obstruction in the transference of structure and meaning into the target language. Many scholars are of the opinion that translating a poem is as good as creating a new one. For the purpose of the study, English translations of poems by Persian poets such as Hafiz, Khayyam and Shamloo are taken into consideration. Furthermore, two different Persian translations of Cristina Georgina Rossetti’s poems are also examined. The translatability of the texts under study was based upon of Katharina Reiss’s theory. According to her theory, one of the textual functions is Expressive; a higher level of literary text such as poetry in which the target text (TT) should aim at recreating the effect that the author of the ST was striving to achieve. This study reveals that a translator of a poem is normally endowed with a potential and intrinsic quality creative enough to recreate another poem with the original sense by communicating the spirit of the message to the receptor.

Keywords:

translatability , figurative language , transference poetry , TL-reader oriented , re-creating