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Ezra Pound

David Mendonça nº 156296

Tiago Mendonça nº 151325

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Prof. Zsófia Gombár

History and Theory of Translation

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Early life

  • Pound was born in 1885 in Hailey, Idaho.
  • He attended many public schools during his childhood.
  • He graduated from Hamilton College in 1905 with a PhB.
  • From September 1907, he taught French and Spanish in Wabash College, Indiana.

Idaho

Hailey

Hamilton College, NY

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Pound’s Translation Career

  • Pound began his translation career during the 1910’s, at a time when Wardour Street English was mostly used in translations of older poetry.

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  • Wardour-Street English was a pseudo-archaic form of diction that was a mixture of older forms of English and modern English.

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Pound in 1913

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Pound’s Translation Career

  • This method was effective in the hands of experienced poets. However, in the hands of less adept translators, it made the great poets of the past sound too similar to each other.

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Pound’s Translation Career

  • Pound rejected Wardour-Street English, opting instead to incorporate modern English and free verse into his translations.

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  • His method of translation influenced other translators to use a more neutral modern diction while keeping a sense of antiquity and timelessness.

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Pound’s Translation Career

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Pound’s Translation Career

  • Pound prioritized the clarity, rhythm, sound and form of the text rather than the sense.

Examples:

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Bitre breostceare – bitter breastcares

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Corna caldast – corn of the coldest

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Pound’s theory of Translation

Eclogues

Aeneid

Metamorphoses

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Pound’s theory of Translation

  • Pound believed that each translation serves as a criticism of the original text.

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  • He mentioned that no translation has to reproduce all aspects of the original text.

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Pound’s theory of Translation

  • Pound defended that modern allusions should be used to communicate the importance of the allusions present in the original texts.
  • Pound expressed that translations should be new poems in their own right and be artistically well-done.

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Pound’s theory of Translation

  • History and the present are connected, since the interpretation of the past is done through current reception and reading of it.

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Bibliography

  • https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ezra-Pound
  • https://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/poundtra.htm
  • https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ezra-pound

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Quiz Time

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