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TRANSLATING RELIGION: GERMAN WOMEN TRANSLATORS OF ROBERT BURNS'S ‘THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT’ IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Author(s) -
Bodammer Eleoma
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/glal.12224
Subject(s) - poetry , worship , german , prayer , hymn , theme (computing) , literature , art , vision , relation (database) , idyll , history , art history , philosophy , theology , archaeology , database , computer science , operating system
Translating Robert Burns's songs and ballads into German was a nineteenth‐century phenomenon; it is not widely known, however, that women translated Burns, as their work has received little critical attention. This article analyses Emilie von Berlepsch's (1802–4) and Emilie Fierlein's (1841) German translations of Burns's ‘The Cotter's Saturday Night’ (1785–6), and the original, in order to demonstrate that their personal religious sensitivities influenced their translation strategies in relation to the religious references in stanzas twelve – eighteen of Burns's poem. Furthermore, critics of ‘The Cotter's Saturday Night’ have overlooked the liturgical structure of the poem and also avoided examining its eschatological and apocalyptic themes, which were also problematic for the translators. The women translators were unwilling to allow Burns's image of God as avenging and wrathful, his patriarchs of the Old Testament as sinful and ruthless, and his apocalyptic references to John of Patmos's visions and the Book of Life to disrupt the rural idyll of the scene of family worship in the cottage. They made significant changes that emphasised the spiritual education of the heart and emotional worship, faith, prayer, and the theme of salvation.