Poetry – Challenges of Untranslatability

Abstract

Translating a literary work is a very dificult task because of its relevant aesthetic and expressive values. The aesthetic values relect the beauty of the writer’s igurative language. The expressive values relect the writer’s thoughts and emotions. Hence, the translator must focus on transferring such values from the source language into the target language. As a separate genre of literature, poetry has something that makes it different from the others. Thus, the beauty of a poem does not result from diction, as is the case with novels and short stories, but also from rhythm, rhyme, meter, and particular expressions and structures, which may not match with those of the daily language user. In a word, translating of poetry much more attention and hard work than translating other literary genres. Through this paper, we aim to present some brief considerations about poetry translation, and offer certain considerations related to the procedure stages of translating a poem.