Abstract

Poetry belongs to the literary genres It is characterized by imagery flowery expressions emotions proverbs idioms etc Most times it is connotative and subject to many interpretations Each poem conveys a particular message formulated in words specific to a language and culture Poetry therefore is deeply rooted in culture and no two cultures are the same Translating a poem from one language to into the framework of a totally different language gives cumbersome results All these factors make the translation of poetry an uphill task and requires a great deal of rigor Translation of poetry is a recreation of the source language SL poetry in the target language TL The dilemma of a translator of poetry is then how to recreate the poem of the source language to the target language while maintaining the structures of source language poem rhyme rhythm meter etc The structural differences between languages constitute another bottleneck for the translator The challenges become more complicated when working with two languages English and Igbo languages that are very wide apart in areas of development structures worldviews and cultures How do we strike a balance between the semantic content and adhere to the aesthetic form The thrust of this paper is to explore the possibility of translating two English poems into the Igbo language analyze the problems encountered and suggest ways to make the translator s job less cumbersome