Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2020, French
Translation is likely as old as human language itself. From its ancient origins (Horace, Jerome, the Babel narrative) to the present day, writers and theorists have held changing and often contradictory views on the goals and values of translation. One important distinction is between approaches to translation that try to make the foreign text seem domestic, and those that try to preserve the foreign elements of a text even in a new language.
In my thesis, I present the case for preserving foreign verse forms when poetry is translated into English, and provide a method for doing so in French-to-English translation. Also included are a brief theoretical history of translation, and a study in the historical practice of poetic translation. Finally, I provide a series of 32 translated poems by a representative selection of prominent poets from the 16th through the 19th centuries.
Committee: Christopher Coski PhD (Advisor)
Subjects: Comparative Literature; European History; Foreign Language; Language; Literature; Modern Language; Modern Literature; Romance Literature