Some opinions on the problems of english poetry translation

영시 번역의 문제점에 관한 소고

With the trend of globalization more people are absorbing in the English learning programs. Not a few attend even the English-Korean translation training course to be semi-professional translators, but we English teachers have already experienced that it is not so easy to translate any language into another, and that it is far more difficult to translate poetry. Much time has been devoted to investigating the problems of translating poetry than any other mode. Poetry translation theory is concerned with the problem of faithfulness to the original poetry. To be a good translator we must fully understand the sound and sense of the original work. But when in translating English poetry into Korean we feel keenly our limits of understanding the sound and style of English poetry, and of expressing them into Korean. Even our sense-oriented translation is far from satisfactory. We often make quite a few mistranslation. Another immediate problem is that of alternation between word-for-word translation and free translation method, but first of all, we should have a perfect knowledge and understanding in English, and a good command of our mother tongue. We should also have a sound interpretation ability because poetry translation is based on the interpretation of the original, and on the shaping of that interpretation. Some doubts have been raised over the feasibility of poetry translation. They say it is not possible to combine in another language the emotion, the form, the style, the musical devices of English poetry. Yet the art of translation has been practiced everywhere in the world. Through this art we can share our experience and culture with foreigners and theirs with us.