A Study of Transmission of Defamiliarization in Shamlou’s Poetry into English Translation

Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature, because of the techniques and its tendency to concentrate. A translator of poetry should possess a good perception of the literary techniques. As both form and content are interrelated in poetry, a translator should consider both of them in translation. Leech (1936-2014) believes what makes poetry to be “poetry” is the linguistic deviations. Leech (1969) itemizes eight types of deviations that will help a translator to convey the poetic techniques. This study analyzes defamiliarization devices in translation of 77 selected poems by Shamlou rendered into English by Saeedpour. It has been proved that only sensual deviations had a high degree of transference in the 77 poems translated by Saeedpour, and the majority of semantic and phonological deviations were ignored. Consequently, there is a great degree of loss in the English translation concentrating the stylistic features of Shamlou’s poetry