“The Translator Must...”: On the Estonian Translation Poetics of the 20th Century

Abstract

The paper outlines the main features of Estonian translation poetics in the 20th century, examining the expression of the prevalent ideas guiding literary translation in writings about translation (mostly reviews and articles) in juxtaposition with examples from actual translations. The predominant ideal of translating verse and prose has been that of artistic translation, especially since the end of the 1920s. On the other hand, this general principle can be shown to have had somewhat differing emphases depending on the field of application as well as time period, ranging from the mostly form-oriented to mostly content-oriented translation.