Challenges of Poem Translation
During poem translation, a literary translator is likely to encounter problems such as linguistic, socio-cultural, as well as aesthetic problems that include metaphorical expressions, dramatic structure, and sound. The main problem faced in the translation of the Vietnamese poem below is the problem of linguistics. There are two points that the writer needs to take into account; obscured and collocation syntactical structures. Collocation refers to a word or a group of words that can typically combine with other words or group of words. For example, the phrase, run a meeting means not to do a session. A collocation in one language may not say the same thing in a different language.
Can collocation be seen in the poem through the phrase; khi ho co gay? Translated to (We’ll get back to this in a bit). Vietnamese is a highly idiomatic language, and this phrase cannot be adequately translated into another language; otherwise, it would mean something else. The second point to take into account is the obscured syntactical structure which plays the moving parts in a poem and is intentionally included. For this reason, such a structure needs to be rendered as carefully as it can be.
The initial step that needs to be taken when dealing with a linguistic problem is finding the deep underlying structure. It is essential first to see the relevant subject followed by the specific verb. Everything else falls into place once these crucial elements are identified. The translator will now be able to reconstruct the structure into a translation that is as close as possible to the original structure. Additionally, the construction of each clause or phrase needs to be clear as well examined.