The translation into Spanish of short poetry forms. Translation-oriented analysis of Voltaire’s "Epigrammes"

Abstract

From the Japanese haiku to the monostiques of Apollinaire, the forms of poetry expression that we bring together in “tiny poetry” are varied. These short poetry forms use force and movement, thanks to verbal economy, to express ingenious thought or subtle criticism. In Translation Studies, poetry translation involves added difficulties due to the symbiosis between form and content. More precisely, tiny poetry presents even more translation challenges as this form of poetry works by reducing the message to its essence. This paper firstly addresses the challenges involved in translating short poetry, and secondly it proposes a translation analysis and a Spanish version of a selected corpus of epigrams from Voltaire’s work. A further objective of this paper is to show the strategies that help translators overcome some of the problems that arise when rendering French poetry into the Spanish language.