The translation of melopoeia into spanish in poetry by Damário Da Cruz

Abstract

This article displays some of the reflections originating from the translation of a collection of poems entitled Todo Risco, oficio da paixão by Damário Da Cruz, a poet from the State of Bahia, into Spanish. Setting off from the three poetic elements distinguished by Ezra Pound (melopoeia, phanopoeia and logopoeia), the article seeks to explain some of the “solutions” found when translating melopoeia from Portuguese into Spanish. On the topic of melopoeia, the North American poet, musician and critic confirms that it “is practically impossible to transfer or translate it from one language to another”. Thus, the aim of this research is to show some of the possible transferrals, without entering into a comparative or contrastive analysis of metric theory for these two Romance languages, seeing as there is an understanding of translating the rhythmic elements, and translation of any other element of the poem cannot be studied in isolation. The demonstration begins by reflecting on the lack of studies on metrics in poetic translation and continues by analysing the components of poetic rhythm, arriving at the conclusion that the most important element in poetic translation from Portuguese into Spanish is musicality (or melody), reinforced in syllable stress and elisions or synaloephas.