Literary translation

The translation of literary works (novels, short stories, plays, poems, etc.)

If the translation of non-literary works is regarded as a skill, the translation of fiction and poetry is much more of an art. In multilingual countries such as Canada, translation is often considered a literary pursuit in its own right. Figures such as Sheila Fischman, Robert Dickson and Linda Gaboriau are notable in Canadian literature specifically as translators, and the Governor General's Awards present prizes for the year's best English-to-French and French-to-English literary translations with the same standing as more conventional literary awards.

Writers such as Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges and Vasily Zhukovsky have also made a name for themselves as literary translators.
Hofstadter.
Hofstadter.

Many consider poetry the most difficult genre to translate, given the difficulty in rendering both the form and the content in the target language. In 1959 in his influential paper "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation", the Russian-born linguist and semiotician Roman Jakobson even went as far as to declare that "poetry by definition [was] untranslatable". In 1974 the American poet James Merrill wrote a poem, "Lost in Translation," which in part explores this subject. This question was also explored in Douglas Hofstadter's 1997 book, Le Ton beau de Marot.

Translation of sung texts — sometimes referred to as a "singing translation" — is closely linked to translation of poetry, simply because most vocal music, at least in the Western tradition, is set to verse, especially verse in regular patterns with rhyme. (Since the late 19th century musical setting of prose and free verse has also come about in some art music, although popular music tends to remain conservative in its retention of stanzaic forms with or without refrains.) A rudimentary example of translating poetry for singing is church hymns, such as German chorales translated into English by Catherine Winkworth.

Translation of sung texts is generally much more restrictive than translation of poetry, because in the former there is little or no freedom to choose between a versified translation and a translation that dispenses with verse structure. One might modify or omit rhyme in a singing translation, but the assignment of syllables to specific notes in the original musical setting places great challenges on the translator. There is the option in prose, less so in verse, of adding or deleting a syllable here and there by subdividing or combining notes, respectively, but even with prose the process is nevertheless almost like strict verse translation because of the need to stick as close as possible to the original prosody. Other considerations in writing a singing translation include repetition of words and phrases, the placement of rests and/or punctuation, the quality of vowels sung on high notes, and rhythmic features of the vocal line that may be more natural to the original language than to the target language.

Whereas the singing of translated texts has been common for centuries, it is less necessary when a written translation is provided in some form to the listener, for instance, as inserts in concert programs or as projected titles in performance halls or visual media.