The Translation of Verse Form. A Revision of Holmes’ Model Based on the Spanish Translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Abstract

While an essential component of poetry, form has been frequently overlooked in research on poetry translation or has been addressed under rather prescriptivist approaches, with notable exceptions (Holmes 1994, Jones, 2011, among others). This paper deals with the translation of the poetic form from a descriptivist perspective from a corpus of 69 Spanish translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets published between 1877 and 2018. It addresses, particularly, the outer form or macrostructure of the poems using one sonnet of each translation as a prototype. This analysis will serve as a basis for classifying these translations according to James S. Holmes’ metapoem forms and for proposing a revision of this model. While there are certain forms or patterns repeated throughout, the diverse solutions show that there is no single favoured way of rendering these sonnets, not even during a specific period (beyond the preference for verse over prose).