Poetic Translation

Published: Thursday, 06 August 2015 09:59

A discipline "Poetic Translation" is for first-year students (2 semester) of a master’s program. It is aimed at providing theoretical and practical knowledge of the main issues of poetic translation in the context of modern requirements to the process of interpretation. New skills and knowledge acquisition in this branch of linguistics is inseparable from an in-depth understanding of the nature and specifics of the translation techniques of poetry. Discipline is studied for 108 hours (3 credit units), including classroom work – 30/20 hours; independent work – 42 hours. It equals 3 ECTS. While mastering the given discipline students are to take an exam.

Content of the course

1. The notion of poetic translation. Poetry translation: the problems of interpretation; Poetic translation as an integral part of the professional skills of an interpreter;
2. Peculiarities of poetry translation: Specificity of professional translation organization in the field of poetry translation (grammatical, lexical, stylistic aspects); Basic properties of poetic information in the frame of the general theory and practice of translation.
3. Intercultural peculiarities of poetry. The identity of a translator of the poetry: The specificity of the poetic discourse translation within intercultural poetic relations; duality of poetic translation as a special type of translation; The influence of the interpreter personality on the product of interpretation. Traditions and peculiarities of the Russian school of poetic translation.
4. The notion of "dynamic information" and "measure of informational content of poetic discourse"; Cultural and historical information in poems and means of its transformation;
5. Poetic discourse as an object of translation:  Characteristic features of poetry translation; Prosody of poetic texts. Rhythm in the poetic discourse, size, rhyme in poetic texts;
6. Genres and forms of poetry. Means of information organization in poetic discourse: Genre division in poetry. Odes. Ballads. Sonnets. Lyrical works. Genre features retention in the process of poetic texts translation.

Materials providing knowledge control

Knowledge control is exercised in the form of an examination and presupposes poetic texts interpretation in accordance with the following algorithm:

1. Read the sonnet aloud to feel the rhythmic and phonic unity.
2. Study the words and syntactic structures of the text to make sure that the logic and content of it is clear to you. Identify the key words and their function in the sonnet.
3. Study the imagery of the text and stylistic means used to create the imaginative world .Identify the units that may cause problems for translation.
4. Study the metric pattern of the text to detect both weak and  strong positions in their connection with the content and imagery of the sonnet.
5. Study the rhyme scheme of the sonnet, consider the words that make rhyming pairs as meaningful units to explore their function in the text.
6. Translate the poem word for word. Bear in mind all possible lexical and grammatical variants.
7. Compare the results with the other translation versions and comment upon them.