The Role of Poetics in Translations of Molana’s Mathnawi Poems Translated from Persian into English

Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to find and discuss the poetics of poetry translation of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty first centuries of English language and to compare it with three translations of the Book One of the Mathnawi translated from Persian into English in order to understand the relation between the poetics of poetry translation of a particular time and its corresponding translation. To achieve this, first the poetics of poetry translation of these three centuries were found through library research. After that, each of these poetics was compared with the translation which was done with its corresponding time. The result made it clear that none of these three observed the poetics of their time. Although these translations were not in accordance with the poetics of poetry translation, this incongruity did not make them unacceptable.