Translating Connotations in Poetry from English into Arabic With Reference to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

Abstract

This research is conducted in the area of interconnection between translation and poetry. It attempts to investigate the problems of translating connotations in poetry from English into Arabic. Most of them are related to linguistic or culture. The essential aim behind conducting this research is to highlight these difficulties as well as propose some solutions. Furthermore, to identify some strategies that may help the translator produce a target poem which seems natural and fluent to the target reader. In this vein, The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who is commonly considered as the father of modern poetry, along with two Arabic translations of it are used in this study. The analytical contrastive study reveals that poetry could hardly have a complete faithful translation. Dr Lu’lu’a’s translations respected the form and chose word for word strategy, while Dr Ragheb preferred to convey the content as faithfully as possible by adding extra verses.