El Poesia Romantico: The Challeges of Translating John Keats to Chabacano

Abstract

The paper seeks to identify challenges which arise before, during, and after the translation process undergone by the researcher herself in translating five poems by English poet John Keats into Chabacano, a creole widely spoken in the Zamboanga Peninsula in the Philippines. This paper categorizes challenges that arise as constraints on: (a) Language, (b) Form, and (c) Context. It seeks to explain the choices made by the translator and in the process, foreground the problems that arose in the translation process. In discussing problems such as constraints on voice, meter, or the transfer of experience, the paper appeals to Jakobson’s concepts of linguistic and cultural untranslatability and Nida’s translation theory on equivalence. The paper aims to provide a basis for further studies of the same nature and to propose a case for distortion of language via translation to serve purposes of its revitalization.