<<..if the target language goes for elegance, simplicity, transparency then in all likelihood it will need to <<jettison some or even a range of the original's knottiness. Here's an example: Celan has very elegant invented images/word-constructions that are beautiful and simple enough to the German ear as behind them one hears the German expression they play off on, but this
subtext is not available to the translator's language & so that image-rime cannot do its clarifying job, leaving the translation with a more difficult or puzzling image.In paronomastic formations such as “rauchdünn”
(smoke-thin) one hears the common expression “hauchdünn” (paper-thin; literally, breath-thin)..>>
The assumption here seems to be that if something is both difficult and elegant, then the second quality ought always to be sacrificed to the first. But one might ask: if such constructions are "beautiful and simple enough" in the original, then where is the "knottiness?" Maybe it's there by implication, but is it the job of a translation to doggedly make everything implicit explicit? To drag everything to the surface?
Granted, if the target language can't reproduce a particular item of wordplay, then there's not much you can do. Except perhaps to try to think like the poet (or like the "text", for authorophobes) and produce comparable kinds of wordplay elsewhere.
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