Microsoft Word 05 descriptions doc

 source text that is in verse
. This is 
analyzed in a seminal paper by 
James S Holmes
(1970), first presented at a conference 
on “Translation as an Art” held in Bratislava, Slovakia, in May 1968 and published in a 
volume co-edited by Holmes himself (an American resident in Amsterdam), Frans de 
Haas (Amsterdam) and the Slovak Anton Popovi
č
(making the book of the key 
publications where various strands come together).
We know that in some target cultures (notably in French, at least until the late 
nineteenth century), foreign verse forms can consistently be rendered in prose. So the 
problem is solved: translators know what to do (translate into prose), and readers know 
what to expect (verse is for only texts originally written in French). That would be one 
huge kind of shift, and it has remarkably little to do with equivalence of the linguistic 

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kind. In other cultural situations, however, alternative shifts may be deemed 
appropriate. Holmes (1970) formalizes these further shifts in terms of four available 
options (in addition to the blanket rendering of verse as prose): the translator can use a 
form that looks like the source-text form (“mimetic form”); they can select a form that 
fulfils a similar 
function
(“analogical form”); they can develop a new form on the basis 
of the text’s content (“organic form”); or they could come up with their own individual 
solution (“extraneous form”).
A model of options for the translation of verse (from Holmes 1970)
1.
Verse as prose
: All foreign verse is rendered as prose, as has been the norm in 
translations into French. 
2.
Mimetic form
: The translator chooses a form in the target language that is as 
close as possible as the one used in the source language. For example, an 
English sonnet can be rendered as a Spanish sonnet well enough, even though 
the metrics of feet in English will not correspond to the syllabic metrics of 
Spanish. Often this involves introducing a new form into the target culture, as 
was done when English 
terza rima
was modeled on the Italian verse form.
3.
Analogical form
: The translator identifies the function of the form in the source-
language tradition, then finds the corresponding form in the target-language 
tradition: “Since the 
Iliad
and 
Gerusalemme liberata
are epics, the argument of 
this school goes, an English translation should be in a verse form appropriate to 
the epic in English: blank verse or the heroic couplet” (Holmes 1970: 95). This 
option might be an application of the equivalence paradigm at a high textual 
level. It is to be distinguished from the blanket “verse to prose” option to the 
degree that it requires identification of the way the specific source-text form 
functions in the source culture.
4.
Organic or content-derivative form
: The translator refuses to look solely at the 
form of the source text (as is done in the above options) and instead focuses on 
the content, “allowing it to take on its own unique poetic shape as the 
translation develops” (Holmes 1970: 96).
5.
Extraneous form
: In some situations, the translator may adopt a form that is 
totally unconnected with the form or content of the source text, and that is not 
dictated by any blanket form for translations in the target culture. In other 
words, anything can happen.
Holmes sees these options as being appropriate to