The Challenge of Hebrew Bible Love Poetry: A Pleonastic Approach to the Translation of Metaphor—Part 1

Abstract

The Song of Songs communicates both aesthetic and emotional “meaning,” but the poem’s message in historical context should not be overlooked. After arguing that it is possible to translate poetry, this article suggests—as a dynamic equivalent in-text solution—“pleonastic” translation. Within the chosen skopos, this translation style adds pleonasms (synonymous adjectives) to metaphors to convey the most essential associations from the source text’s cognitive environment. Meanwhile, it honours the purposeful polysemy and the emphatic elusiveness of the poetry. Although the use of pleonasms spoils the original brevity of the Hebrew poetry, one can compensate for this by other poetic devices. Part 2 (forthcoming) exemplifies this with a translation of Song 7.2-6 (English 7.1-5) that is true to the poetic nature of the Song of Songs, its emotional expressions, and its register, while also rendering the metaphors intelligibly for today’s reader.