Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

10. Any other literal versions that can be obtained
from scholars in the fi eld.
11. A faithful but somewhat free literary version.
12. A free poetic version.
The above-mentioned material would then be
submitted to American and British poets, preferably
experienced in translation. The list would include ten to
twenty prominent poets who have done highly formal
translations as well as those who prefer free versions. Each
poet will work independently and produce his own versions
of the Turkish poem in English.
The scholar will be available to the American (and
British) poets to answer their specifi c questions, to expand
on the material provided, to clarify the ambiguities, to
check work in progress, to comment on the new versions,
etc.
The complete set of the basic material and the fi nished
product — the poetic versions — will probably make a
very interesting book, certainly a unique one. Its contents
and methodology are likely to attract the attention of
literary scholars, cultural historians, poets, and professors
and students in the fi eld of comparative literature.
The explanatory texts on the Turkish poemʼs cultural
context and its recreation by some of Americaʼs and
Serdar Arat, Kiss in the Garden, 1997. Mixed media on paper, 30 in. x 42 in.
Englandʼs most distinguished poets and translators
will give us the poem itself in its most pleasurable
transmutations into English verse and reconstitute the
poem as the synecdoche of a different culture. Although
the project, in this instance, is based on Turkish, it is
designed as a model or prototype for a new understanding
and method of translating a poem in all its aspects within
its own culture — hence the term Cultranslation — and
could be, should be, used for many other languages as
well. In fact, its application on a very broad basis will
probably constitute the most effective approach to world
poetry. As an important by-product, the project will help
illustrate differences among the translation techniques of
the individual poets. It will conceivably shed light on the
aesthetic values of the literature and culture into which the
poem has been transposed.
The poem itself is supreme, of course. If my
assumption that a single translator can hardly do a
defi nitive version is right, then an in-depth analysis of the
poem itself together with its cultural context and a whole
consort of virtuoso renditions of it might be a far more
effective, if not ideal, way of creating it anew. It might be, I
submit, worthwhile to try Cultranslation.
Translation Review 45