Translating Poetry: the Issue of Phonetics

Abstract

The article focuses on the problems of poetry translation and the challenges that a translator may face while processing the poetic text, especially on the phonological level. The distinctive feature of any translation is its transformability. An interpreter and a translator define the direction of modifications that the target text, as well as a source text, might undergo. Cognitive, pragmatic, synergistic and discourse studies provide scholars with new tools and methods for interpreting poetic texts and it makes it possible for a translator to come with an adequate translation. The article brings out the traditional strategies in combination with the method of stereoscopic analysis and prototypical reading to study the phonological aspect of a verse, which provides access to the content and message of the target text. The imagery space of the poetic text is created not only verbally but non-verbally. Images are activated via the articulated sound and spatial arrangement of the poem; the latter interact with the verbal system and carry the meaning.