Translation

Abstract

‘We know we have to find the “voice” to write a poem. The voice, not of the author, but if anything, the voice of the poem.’ The esteemed Irish poet Paul Muldoon utters these words in conversation with the German poet, novelist, essayist, and publisher Michael Krüger. In line with its etymological roots, translation is frequently thought of as an act of ‘carrying’ a verbal construct ‘across’ linguistic boundaries, before setting it down in a new language. This is not what Muldoon and Krüger, accomplished translators both, argue for in their discussion of translation captured in this chapter, however. Instead, they urge us to consider that literature becomes multiply authored when it circulates in the world, and that translators, far from being mere shipping agents wrapping a poem in gauze, instead impose their presence upon the work.