TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

endition of the original image: “La geam cu străluciri de foc”. Version 3
ignores the translation of the epithet “brilliant” thus losing one important
stylistical device. Version 4 omits to translate the noun “niche”.
The comparison in the second line, “How statue-like I see thee
stand”, is preserved as an explicit comparison only in versions 2 and 4: “Miapari
ca o statuie nemişcată!” “Te văd ca o statuie stând!”. In versions 1 and
3, the comparison is changed into a metaphor, the first version adding a
second use of the Perfect Simplu tense (the first one appears in the end of
the second stanza and reminds the Romanian reader of Eminescu’s poetic
use of this tense) while the third adds a new element that was not present in
the original, “şi în vânt”. The agate lamp is only described in point of
its being in Helen’s hand, because Poe wanted to suggest various
interpretations: either the burning lamp made the window-niche shine or it
was Helen herself that shone illuminating the “wanderer”. Two Romanian
versions stress the fact that the lamp was burning thus making it more
difficult to get to Poe’s suggestion: “În mână cu lampa de-agată fierbinte”
(version 1), “Ţii lampa de agat, arzând” (version 3). Versions 2 and 4 render
the neuter image of the original. The metaphorical identification of Helen
with Psyche as the one that reveals divinity is made by the second
invocation of the poem, followed by a construction which lacks the verb:
“Psyche, from the regions which / Are Holy Land!” The Romanian versions
1, 3 and 4 found it necessary to use the verb “a veni” or “a sosi” to suggest
Psyche’s origin. “Holy Land” is translated in version 1 by a plural (“Ţări
Sfinte”) thus effacing the idea of unicity. Version 2 is closer to the original
in not using any verb, but it adds a noun phrase in the end, “de jertfă
minunată”, with reference to Biblical sacrificial rituals. Version 3 also adds
“tainic drum”, a detail about the way on which Psyche had come, to stress
the idea of mystery and of abstract voyage in space and time which is at the
basis of the whole poem. Version 4 is closest to the original, the only
change it operates being the translation of the plural “regions” by a singular
“loc” which does not affect the meaning. This last stanza contains emotional
markers represented by two interjections, “Lo” and “Ah” as well as by four
exclamation marks. Versions 1, 2 and 4 preserve only two such marks while
version 3 omits them.
Only two Romanian versions, 2 and 4, render the rhyme pattern of
the poem. Moreover, version 4 succeeds in rendering the rhyming sounds
[or] in the first stanza, symbolical of sadness in Poe’s view. Version 1 uses
the pattern abbab in the first and the last stanza, while the second stanza,
reduced to only four lines, has the pattern abab. Version 3 adopts another
strategy: the pattern ababb in the first and second stanzas and the pattern
abbab in the last stanza. In point of metrical pattern, it is only version 4 that