Konstitutive Aspekte der Ästhetik im Sprachkunstwerk und ihre Behandlung als Übersetzungsproblem

In translating elements of language the question that is very often raised is how to deal with the aesthetic features, especially if they form part of a work of poetry. Aesthetic theory, since its emancipation from philosophy by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in the 18th century, has developed our knowledge about the performance of aesthetic features; but in translation practice these aesthetic aspects are for the most part still being neglected. With translations of poetry, for example, the aspects of verse form and verse content of the original work of art are taken into account solely for the purpose of representing them in another language, disregarding the aesthetic values to which, from the time of their invention, their author owed his fame. Even in translations by poets of the work of colleagues, an understanding of the author's special aesthetic inventions is found to be lacking; here the translating — or "re-composing" (Stefan George) — process usually produces the aesthetics due to the interpreter's own composing attitudes. The article gives an introduction to aesthetic theory as a component of communication theory, and offers some examples of aesthetic structures in poetical works and in translations of them, as well as an example of representation of these structures in translated texts.