Problems in translating Pessoa’s poetry into English

Abstract

This paper focuses on five problems all translators of Fernando Pessoa’s poetry into English must grapple with. The first is whether or not to distinguish the poetry of Pessoa (orthonym), Álvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro and Ricardo Reis through the use of stylistic and lexical markers. The second is: to what degree should the translator imitate Pessoa’s occasional labyrinthine constructions? Third, every translator must decide at the outset whether or not to use rhyme and meter, where these occur in Pessoa’s poetry. The final two problems concern Portuguese grammar: how to translate the pretérito perfeito do indicativo [simple past tense], which lends itself in English to both simple past and present perfect tenses; and how to translate the personal infinitive, a form unique among all languages for handling a change in subject within a sentence.

Keywords

• pessoa, fernando
• portuguese literature
• translations
• versification
• rhyme
• tense (grammar)