The art of translation allows people to get acquainted with the works of authors who write in almost all languages of the world, without bothering to learn these languages. But not everyone who reads Shakespeare or Goethe, Stendhal or Coelho in translation thinks how much the translation conveys the peculiarities of the author's speech.
Features of prosaic translation
With the translation of prose works, the situation is simpler, although there are some subtleties here. Fictional speech, as you know, differs from ordinary colloquial or even literary speech. Each author, creating a work of art, uses language as a tool that allows him to express his ideas most accurately, vividly and figuratively.
Of course, meaning is the main thing in prose works, but the way this meaning is conveyed is also important. Each author uses his own means: he finds vivid unusual images, diversifies the speech of the heroes and author's remarks with idioms of his native language, directly or indirectly refers to the historical and cultural realities of his native country, obvious to the reader-compatriot, but not too clear to a foreigner.
The task of the translator is not only to correctly translate the author's text, but also to convey to the reader the atmosphere of the work, to make the realities that the author describes or only mentions as clear as possible. To do this, sometimes it is necessary to give explanations not provided by the author, in remarks, to replace idioms and phraseological units that are obscure to readers with close matches, but taken from the native language, to take into account the author's peculiarities of constructing phrases and sentences. Only in this case the translation will be able to reflect not only the author's intention, but also the peculiarities of his style. And, of course, a good translator is able to completely "dissolve" in the author, to become one for a moment, in order to create a truly worthy literary translation.
Features of poetic translation
The situation is a little different with the translation of poetry. If in plays or epic works the meaning still retains a leading position, then in lyric poems the transfer of the author's feelings, his mood, state and perception of the world comes out on top. And reflecting this in full is much more difficult than simply retelling the content.
Therefore, any poetic translation is always a little of the author's work of the translator, because he brings his feelings into it, and without this the lyrics are dead and useless.
Another difficulty faced by anyone who has conceived to make a poetic translation is the observance of the rhythmic pattern of the original, and ideally of its basic sound series. Considering that the languages of the author and the translator can differ significantly from each other, this can be very difficult, sometimes impossible.
So, for example, the English language is characterized by an abundance of monosyllabic and two-syllable words, while longer words prevail in Russian. Thus, a verse stanza written in English will contain more words than its exact translation into Russian. But this translation must be "fit" in the author's size, while not losing either meaning or emotional content! Moreover, it would be nice to try to preserve its musical sound. Only the most ingenious translators are able to cope with such a task, but sometimes it becomes overwhelming for them too.
Therefore, willy-nilly, the translator of a poetic work creates his own poem "based on" the author's, sometimes changing it almost beyond recognition. It is no coincidence that the translations of poetry are so different from different authors. And in order to appreciate the "true" Shakespeare, it is better, after all, to read his works in English.
