Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Károly Szokolay: The problems of translating poetry

Greek and Latin metres did not become implanted in Great Britain, as they did in Germany and Hungary. The character of a language determines what poetic forms it is able to use. Poems written in distichs are easy to translate from Hungarian into German and vice versa, because both languages can use that metrical form. Friedrich Schiller writes, In Hexameter steigt des Springquells flüssigs Säule, Im Pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch hersb. In Hungarian: Hexameterben tör fel az égnek a karcsú szökőkút, S pentameterben hull dallamos íve alá. (Translated by István Tóthfalusi) As Erika Szepes and István Szerdahelyi define in their book Prosody (Verstan), the English system of versification is "accent-changing", which shifted towards metrical versification under the influence of classical forms. But because the English language has plenty of monosyllabic words, mainly the iamb and trocheus have spread and become most popular in English poetry. No wonder that blank verse became the permanent metrical form of English poetry in every respect: it is enough to think of such great poets as Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Robert Browning, T.S. Eliot, etc. The poetry of every nation can be great by its own laws. There are several forms in the world which cannot be used properly in Hungarian, for example the socalled Chinese syllable-counting verse can be translated into most foreign languages only by using a similar verse-form, not the same. Here is an example for that in Hungarian: Síkon szép fák, lombjuk tömött, Látod, uram úgy örülök! Síkon szép fák, lombjuk ragyog. Soha, milyen boldog vagyok! (Translated by László Lator) 134