Sevdalinka in Translation: Pragmatic Equivalence
Sevdalinka in Translation: Pragmatic Equivalence

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse the translation of sevdalinka poems, which are part of the literary and musical tradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The music that accompanies them is called sevdah. The corpus will differ from the standard translations of sevdalinkas in that it will contain poems written or adjusted by Damir Imamović, the Bosnian sevdah singer and composer, while the translation is provided by Amira Sadiković. In that sense, we may say that the analysis will focus on the new view of tradition, but Imamović’s poetic expression faithfully follows the established themes of sevdalinkas, both by form and by content. The sevdalinkas analysed are part of the album entitled Dvojka [The Second], released in Bosnian and in English in 2016, with a stating that “the translation follows the original verse as much as possible”. The approach to the analysis is Mona Baker’s pragmatic equivalence (1992), since sevdalinkas are usually characterised by dialogues, be it with lovers, mothers, nature, etc. In that respect, Baker’s approach to the pragmatic analysis in translation, seen as important for cross-cultural communication, will be applied through the pragmatic theories she considers: conversational implicatures, Grice’s cooperative principle, as well as speech acts, seen as complementary to Grice’s maxims.

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