Re: Is poetry translatable? – Big Think
If poetry is indeed emotion recollected in tranquility or the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings as Wordsworth believed,it certainly cannot be translated because the language used by the poet is uniquely his own ,created as part of his own poetic experience.A translator may try to recreate his experience by simulating for himself a similar one and try to re-create it for others in an alien language.But that is a mere approximation.
On the other hand poetry is not merely emotion recollected with a
specificity of the experience that caused it,the poetic experience can
be re-created in any language ,looking for approximate symbols for a
similar experience .This is of course on the basis that such
experiences are universal in nature ,being part of the shared human
experience .
Ideasblog 