Textual shifts and equivalence between poetic systems: The Cancioneiros and the Classic of Poems compared
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2025.e108400Keywords:
literary translation, comparative translation, textual shifts, Classic of Poems, CancioneirosAbstract
Portuguese-Chinese literary translation should inquire into the criteria of “poetic-cultural equivalence” between their literary systems. Based on a set of case-studies, this paper demonstrates how such equivalence can be converted into translation strategies/models. If the text is taken as translation unit, it is possible to transfer its “Literariness” (the features that define it as a literature in its own system) through textual shifts. This argument is developed in four sections. The introduction presents the problem and its basic presuppositions. The second section maintains that a strictly linguistic understanding of translational phenomena is not enough to deal with the “Literariness”. A “textual level” (supralinguistic) is added to Catford’s theory of translation. We claim that cultural and poetic differences orient “dislocations” regarding the composition and performance of translated poems (textual shifts). The third section applies the concept of “poetic-cultural equivalence” to Portuguese and Chinese language poetics. Medieval Iberian Peninsula and Ancient China share comparable socioeconomic and institutional features, so that there are analogies in terms of what writing poems means, as well as their social functions. The last section applies the concept of “poetic-cultural equivalence” to a comparative study of texts selected from the Cancioneiros and the Classic of Poems. They are comparable in three levels: content, form and theory. We conclude that it is possible to use equivalent texts as references or models to literary translation performed through textual shifts, thereby making their literary systems converge mutually.
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