ON THE TRANSLATION OF POETRY: A READING OF RAVINDRANATH TAGORE’S EKLA CHALO RE AND ZAVERCHAND MEGHANI’S KAVI, TANE KEM GAME? (Pages 60-73) by Ms. Deepa M. Desai in THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST / ISSN: 2350-1499 (Online); 2350-0751 (Print)

Every poem, drama, novel or essay cannot be read without translation in countries whose language is different from the author. Therefore, translation is a key to the other language and it is a channel through which ideas and cultures pass. Poetry translation involves cognition, discourse and action by and between human and textual actors in a physical and social setting. The issue of translatability of poetry has given rise to theoretical and practical debates among scholars. Every act of translation is mingled with some problems and challenges. Poetry translation may be more challenging than any other types of translation due to the importance of both from and content in the type of interpretation and response evoked in the audience. Robert Frost remarked, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation”, which implies that poetry is some intangible, ineffable thing, which although constructed in language cannot be transposed across languages. Many writers have struggled to define the difficulties of translating poetry. So, the translation of poetry, especially Gujarati poetry into English language is a tricky task. While doing translation, one should take into consideration the trend of thought in literature and the art of translator‟s times and the translator‟s purposes on translation. All the translations should be regarded as a successful creation. The successful translation may not be necessarily perfect. That‟s why, I have taken up Ravindranath Tagore‟s English poem „Ekla Chalo Re‟ translated into Gujarati by Mahadevbhai Desai and Zaverchand Meghani‟s Gujarati poem „Kavi Tane Kem Game?‟ translated into English by Pradip N. Khandwala as a case study. The aim of my paper is to show and to study what is deliberately reproduced or excluded by both the translators to retain culture of source language(SL). Keywords: Cognition, Social setting, theoretical, challenges, intangible, tricky, reproduced, excluded, source language