Decision making in translating epic poetry into English : a pragmatic approach

Abstract EN

Language is characterized by richness and variability and gives its users the latitude to make decisions via selecting vocabularies and structures and adapting them according to the intention of the text producer.

This paper studies and analyzes some excerpts of an epic poem written by the Palestinian poet, Hilal Al-Farie and translated by Professor Dinha T.

Gorgis.

It also investigates the problems the translator encounters on the formal, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic levels and pinpoints the areas of success and failure on the part of the translator.

The main problem of the present study lies in how to understand the meaning resulting from the poet's uses of words and structures in a way different from the ordinary use of language, aiming at specifying the difficulties that face translators in their tasks to realize the intended meaning of poetic texts in the light of the three criteria, namely variability, negotiability and adaptability which are inherent in language, and consequently finding the appropriate way to render them.