Ezra Pound’s Adaptation and Translation of the Japanese Nō

Year 2010, Issue: 32, 19 - 27, 01.10.2010

Réka Mihálka

Abstract

Few would ever contest the axiom that translation and adaptation are partially overlapping segments of the same continuum. If attempts at definitions have shown anything, it is their inseparability, even though many scholars and critics like to stress their distinctiveness e.g. through the dichotomy of “faithfulness” vs. “innovativeness” . Among others, the subject of the present article, Ezra Pound, also insisted on the distinction between “interpretative translation” i.e. the majority of translations and the “other sort” i.e. adaptation : In the long run the translator is in all probability impotent to do all of the work for the linguistically lazy reader. He can show where the treasure lies, he can guide the reader in choice of what tongue is to be studied, and he can very materially assist the hurried student who has a smattering of a language and the energy to read the original text alongside the metrical gloze.

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