<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Poetry is often claimed to be untranslatable. More specifically, rendering light verse, i.e. poetic humour in another language poses serious challenges for the translator to encounter. In spite of these alleged obstacles, T. S. Eliot’s <italic>Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats</italic> has been translated and lately retranslated into Hungarian in the form of inventive and jocular texts for children. After summarizing the theoretical aspects of poetry translation and providing a brief overview of Eliot’s collection of poems about cats, the present study aims to approach the English source text by highlighting its foregrounded elements: titles, names, and cultural realia and their Hungarian counterparts in the latest translation by Attila Havasi and Dániel Varró.</p>
</abstract>

Poetry is often claimed to be untranslatable. More specifically, rendering light verse, i.e. poetic humour in another language poses serious challenges for the translator to encounter. In spite of these alleged obstacles, T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats has been translated and lately retranslated into Hungarian in the form of inventive and jocular texts for children. After summarizing the theoretical aspects of poetry translation and providing a brief overview of Eliot’s collection of poems about cats, the present study aims to approach the English source text by highlighting its foregrounded elements: titles, names, and cultural realia and their Hungarian counterparts in the latest translation by Attila Havasi and Dániel Varró.

Translating Poetry – An Impossible Task?

Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Poetry is often claimed to be untranslatable. More specifically, rendering light verse, i.e. poetic humour in another language poses serious challenges for the...

Translating Poetry – An Impossible Task?

Published Online: Jan 03, 2023

Page range: 1 - 12

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2022-0022

Keywords
literary translation, poetry, light verse, realia

© 2022 Zsuzsanna Ajtony, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Translating Poetry – An Impossible Task?

Published Online: Jan 03, 2023

Page range: 1 - 12

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausp-2022-0022

Keywordsliterary translation, poetry, light verse, realia

© 2022 Zsuzsanna Ajtony, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
literary translation, poetry, light verse, realia