Translating poetry
Abstract
Over the last few years, the number of translations of poetry into Basque has increased considerably. Thanks to the initiative of the University of the Basque Country, among others, translations from Basque into other languages, primarily Spanish, are also growing in number. This has motivated Pello Zabaleta, Basque translator and poet, to make a series of reflections and suggestions on the difficulties involved in the translation of poetry. In this article, he makes a number of observations on the different criteria which a translator of poetry might adopt: translate literally, according to the sense, recreate the poetic work, copy the original, etc.; also, he analyzes translations which try to keep the rhyme and rhythm of the original, as well as some poetic formulae which are impossible to translate. The author's approach to this question is that it is indeed possible to translate poetry and that it is equally possible to translate poetry into poetry without having to resort to prose versions. Thus, poetry should be translated as such, and that special attention should be given to the beauty of its rendering. In many cases, this would require that the poem be re-created and that the translation should respect the rhythm of the original composition. On the other hand, some poetic formulae which are apparently impossible to translate can be rendered with other different procedures. The article ends by reminding us that many poets have been translators, and good ones too, of other poets and that this activity doubles the efforts of poets to analyze the possibilities and resources of languages. For this reason, Zabaleta considers that it is highly recommendable for Basque poets to translate poetry.
