STRATEGIES APPLIED IN THE ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF POEMS IN THE POETRY COLLECTION “LOVE & MISADVENTURE” BY LANG LEAV

Abstract

Poetry translation has always been regarded as a more perplexing task than the translation of any other literary texts due to its intrinsic literary and aesthetic complexity. Hence, concerted efforts have been made to identify translation methods or strategies that can be adoptedto preserve the poet’s message and stylistic uniqueness, thus generating equivalent effects in target language.The aims of this study were to find out the translation strategies applied to translate the poems in the poetry collection Love & Misadventure written by Lang Leav, concerning André Lefevere’s seven strategies (1975), and subsequently draw some lessons about poetry translation from English into Vietnamese. The data were obtained from 65 English-written poems and their Vietnamese translated versions in the bilingual book Love & Misadventure – Yêu là thương hay vận rủi by means of document observation. The theoretical model used was seven strategies for translating poetry devised by André Lefevere (1975). The researcheropted for a qualitative approach, and the data were analysed descriptively. The findings showed that the translator applied three out of seven strategies proposed by Lefevere which were metrical translation, rhymed translation, and blank verse translation. Blank verse translation was the most frequently used strategy, followed by metrical translation and rhymed translation. These results implied the translator’s tendencies to transfer poetic form and meaning in her translation, as well as revealing certain gaps in Lefevere’s methodology in the case of translating poetry from English into Vietnamese.