Translation Laboratory: Oskar Pastior’s Applied Translation Research

Abstract

In his intonations to a poem by Charles Baudelaire, which appeared in 2002 under the title o du roher iasmin, Oskar Pastior conducts a piece of applied translation research. He meets the challenges of literary translation, as they are most prominently shown in lyrics, in a translation laboratory in which, in 43 attempts, the different sides of the Baudelaire poem are set out and examined. The act of translating is methodically segmented and explored regarding its latitude, and it is systematically and polyperspectively put in reference to the many different aspects of the body of language. By serialising the individual attempts, the literary text gains an argumentative structure that makes it readable as artistic research: it produces aesthetic knowledge in artistic practice.