Echoes of Poetry, Echoes of Translation: Rendering into Spanish John O’Donohue’s Echoes of Memory

摘要

Poetry translation has been a constant debate for centuries. Through some of John O’Donohue’s poems from Echoes of Memory, different translating challenges are explained and justified. Irish native speaker, John O’Donohue, includes the west of Ireland, Gaelic terms and mystic symbolism in his poetry. How to translate these aspects from L1 (English) to L2 (Spanish), as well as poetry difficulties in general, is the central part of this project. Ten poems from John O’Donohue’s Echoes of Memory have been chosen and each of them has been translated into Spanish. The analysis is divided into four blocks: Gaelic terms, mystic and symbolic allusions, poetic difficulties and linguistic challenges. Each of them examines the most problematic issues when translating, how they were solved and why that particular translation was chosen. Authentic poetry translation is difficult to achieve; however, with the proper skills it is possible to create a close version.