EFFECTIVENESS OF ‘IMITATION’ AS A POETRY TRANSLATION METHOD: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON THE TRANSPOSITION OF ALFRED LORD TENNYSON’S ‘ENOCH ARDEN’ AS ‘SUDO SUDU’ BY ¯ SAGARA PALANSURIYA IN THE SRI LANKAN CONTEXT

Abstract

The fundamental task of the translation is to transpose unknown facts into known by giving knowledge or an esthetic enjoyment for another audience of readers. In translation, expecting perfection is impossible as there is no single language in this world that shares the same features with another language. This scenario can be clearly epitomized in the literary translation of which poetry translation is the most problematic and debatable sub-field. Due to the difficulty of poetry translation, many experts believe that ‘poetry is untranslatable.’ and therefore, translators use different strategies to convert the aesthetic values in a poem into another language. Accordingly, this qualitative study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of one such strategy namely ‘Imitation’ proposed by John Dryden and its suitability in the Sri Lankan context. In this regard, the narrative poem, ‘Enoch Arden’ (1864) by Alfred Lord Tennyson and its Sinhalese imitation, ‘sudo sudu’ (1948) by Sagara Palansuriya were referred. They ¯ were compared, and their similarities and dissimilarities were separately categorized using the content analysis method. In conclusion of this study, it revealed that though these two poems contrast in terms of words, sense, figurative language, patterns of sound, prosody, structure (number of stanzas and lines), settings, and names of the characters, and etc., they share the same set of themes such as friendship, love, separation, bereavement, and the struggle of life. Palansuriya has produced ‘sudo sudu’ by taking these general themes of the original into ac- ¯ count and recreated it appropriately for the Sri Lankan context following completely different poetic techniques and background details. Finally, though the target poem cannot be recognized as a complete transcription of the original, the usage of the method of ‘Imitation’ helped the target audience to enjoy the general aesthetic value included in the original indigenously.