A Log Cabin Out of Stone: - Dartmouth College

issues which are glaring and some that are more subtle. To translate a poem with a clear
alliteration motive into a new language that lacked any similar poetic device really
wouldn’t capture the poem. Likewise, to translate a poem that was motivated more by
puns and dual meanings into a form that offered just one possible interpretation also
would be unfaithful to the original.
Translating from one language to another is like building a log cabin out of rocks.
It is impossible to make a log cabin out of stone, but it is certainly possible to find a stone
equivalent of a log cabin, one with the same purpose and uses, yet with a different set of
problems. The stone house will never be exactly like the log cabin, but one is able to see
the clear relationship between the two in the structure, the size, the way it stands and so
forth. The reason why this works is because a house is not defined by its materials, but
by its function. If we think of poetry in terms of its function we will be able to more
clearly figure out how to render certain issues. Although the function of the house is what
is being duplicated, we must break down the original log cabin in order to find out how
best to make an equivalent in stone.
Susan Bassnett-McGuire offers a similar approach in her 1980 book Translation
Studies. Out of all of the theories that I have read, this diagram is how I visualize my
translation process: 18
Source language
Receptor Language
Translation
Analysis Transfer Restructuring
18 Bassnett-McGuire, Susan Translation Studies (London: Methuen & Co, 1980), 16.
19