Linguistic challenges in literary translation

Abstract

Literary translation is the need of the modern world today as it plays a very important role in conveying the meaning, emotions, tone and cultural essence from one language to another language. Literary translation is more difficult than literal translation because it has to balance the emotional and cultural aspect of a literary text and language. In literary translation, we need to have the deep knowledge of both target and source languages. We must be familiar the local dialects of both the languages and must have the balancing power between source text and the aesthetic, syntactic, and idiomatic demands of the target language. This article explores the important linguistic challenges of literary translation including semantic challenges, syntax and grammar variations, idiomatic expressions, wordplay, neologisms, and register. It also examines how these challenges affect the overall process of literary translation and what strategies translators use to address them.