Chapter 24 provides a history of thought on poetry translation ranging from the Roman poets translating Greek, to the experiments of Louis and Celia Zukovsky. They explore how poetic forms, for example the haiku and the sonnet, have been introduced to literary systems beyond their origins through translation, and how the poetry of the classical world has been reanimated through modernism’s shifts in practices and views of translation. They discuss the ‘translation’ of texts in a literary context by poets and versioners who may or may not read the source languages concerned. Throughout, the emphasis is on exemplification and on the connection between theoretical perspectives and paratextual reflection.

This chapter outlines a number of issues which are important in grammatical description (though they are often taken for granted) and which can affect readers’ understanding: the depth and refinement of the description, how to distinguish between different uses, and how to recognise and verbalise the concepts of formality and acceptability. Following this there is a consideration of three other important issues based on a research project (METALANG) using a corpus of grammatical description:

• personality – e.g. whether to use personal pronouns (we, you) to address the reader, or a passive, and the pros and cons of each;

• modality – the use of e.g. modal auxiliaries such as can and adverbs such as generally to indicate some form of hedging on statements, which is very common;

• sub-technical vocabulary – e.g. the use of words such as ‘state’, ‘action’, ‘event’ to describe the meaning of verbs.