TRANSLATION AND POETRY: IRRECONCILIABLE ACTIVITIES?

Abstract

When ones associates translation and poetry it frequently means to face academic and scientific preconceptions strongly rooted in the western culture. On the one hand, translation is considered essential to the information exchange between different linguistic codes and even as the enabler of scientific and technological progresses resulting from the contact with other more evolved economic realities. On the other hand, translation’s role as cultural “bridge” is far from being universally accepted when it has to work on the “literary treasures” of any given national culture. This controversial character gave the motto for the eminently practical analysis I intend to present in this paper of four distinct translations, from different time periods as well, of William Blake’s poem The Tyger. The existence of four different translations by four Portuguese translators made it possible to gather a larger and more diversified corpus, on which to base real conclusions for the poetic translation problems, duly contextualised.