On the Translation of Verse Form. Shakespeare’s Sonnets into Spanish

This work deals with the translation of the poetic form from a corpus of 69 Spanish translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets published between 1877 (when the first translation appeared) and 2018. The study primarily addresses three aspects of this subject.

Firstly, the metatranslational discourse in translatorial prefaces on issues concerning the translation of form, which are generally based on the recurrence of certain topoi, or ‘translation memes’ (Chesterman 1996; 1997). Then, it reveals the features of the translation of the outer form, or macrostructure, of the sonnets, taking as a point of departure Holmes’ classification of the ‘metapoem’ forms, as well as the mechanisms of repetition in the translated poems (mainly anaphora, parallelism and alliteration).

And, lastly, it provides a rationale on the translation process of formal poetry based on translation as recreation and built upon the interpretation of the results obtained in the previous chapters and the discourse on poetry translation found in scholarly papers. The issues to be addressed, then, can be summarised in three basic questions regarding the translation of poetic form: What do the translators say? What do they do? How do they do it?

Funding and duration of the project

The doctoral project “On the Translation of Verse Form. Shakespeare’s Sonnets into Spanish” was funded by the University of Vigo (Doctoral Fellowship), the European Regional Development Fund and the Republic of Estonia (Dora Plus scholarship for visiting doctoral students).

This project was developed between April 2016 and December 2020.