CHASING TRANSLATION STRATEGIES IN POETRY TRANSLATION STANDING UNDER THE SKY OF VERLAINE’S POEM “LE CIEL EST PAR-DESSUS LE TOIT"

Abstract

With the act of translation, the individual adds new knowledge and thought and action to her/ his own capital. When it comes
to poetry, besides various additions, it is possible to observe dense emotion and meaning presented with compact and elegant
utterance by using selected words. Whether poetry can be translated is a highly controversial issue. There are many studies
dealing with poetry translation. The academic texts are mostly produced within the framework of descriptive studies and it can
be said that those studies depend on a theory in translation studies so as to produce objective evaluation towards translations.
Studies that examine whether the poem can be translated and the translation approaches used or adopted in a realized translation
act are important in terms of being a guide in this field. In this study, the translation techniques in Verlaine's poem “Le Ciel
est, par-dessus le toit” that was translated into Turkish by Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı as “Gök Öyle Mavi ”and in English as “The Sky
Blue-Smiles above the Roof” by Gertrude Hall Brownell were analysed to produce a comparative point of view between target
languages. The main focus of the study was to evaluate the translation techniques in two different target languages. The reason
why a French poet was preferred is that he was very influential in the literary systems of the periods when the translations were
made. The main aim of the study is to identify and analyze the translation techniques used in two different target languages in
poetry translation with a descriptive method. At the end of the study, the translation strategies used in Turkish and English
target texts are localization, addition, omission, word-for-word translation, replacement, adaptation, communicative translation
method, compensation, generalization and explanation. Since the study was conducted on a single poem of the poet no statistics such as the frequency of use of strategies were presented. Considering the strategies used, it has been observed that equivalence
was important in both target languages and free translation method was not preferred by the translators.