Literary Translators Should Be Both Poetically And Linguistically Gifted

From the moment the development of the ancient civilizations arose, poetry has been an important part of people’s lives. There are great numbers of famous classical poems in the world, such as Beowulf, Gilgamesh, and the Iliad. All of these poetry gained different special status that motivated and inspired people from around the world to study poetry.Poetry is meant to express the emotions and touch the feelings of the readers or listeners. Hence, the poet should have the capability to put those right words effectively. Due to the fact that the study of poetry is so popular and in demand, some of these literary arts are translated from one language to another.However, translating poems is not that easy; there are several important factors that need to be considered when translating literature, such as figures of speech, rhythm or rhyme tone. These factors are needed in order to maintain the interest of the people in the poem.Literary translators understand the difficulties in literary translation, especially when it is between two fundamentally different languages. Bad translation may affect the quality of the original text, and as such the dignity of the literary artist.Literary translation is different from the other types of document translation. It should be noted that literary translation should only be done by professional and native speaker of the target language.Today, one of the in demand languages for literary translation is the Mandarin language. Chinese literary arts are rich and have seen constant growth. Thus, translating Chinese literature may involve complexities due to the massive difference of the Chinese language to other languages, from usage of writing systems to grammar and pronunciation.Some Chinese who are great and fluent in the English language, may have no problem in translating from English to Chinese; however may find it difficult to translate literature from Chinese to English. In a multilingual world where communication is prevalent and yet language barriers are massive, language translation and interpreting is vitally important in communication and learning.The difficulty of poetic and literary translation leads to the common thinking and ideas that suggest that all literary or poetic translators should be poets in order to deliver the right message in a proper way to the readers and listeners. Poetry or literature can be effectively translated by those who have a deep interest in literary or poetry; a translator who possesses the ability to be a poetic artist, who can feel the emotion and sensation. In addition, literary translators should have a wide knowledge in both of the source and target language, in order to provide an accurate and high-quality literary translation product.