Creative Translation: From Mimicry to Limicry

Creative translation can take numerous forms and provides an often-illuminating focus on the source text. Mimicking an author's voice by transposing sonnets into limericks has allowed the Australian poet Jan Owen, for instance, to delve at once more deeply and more playfully into Baudelaire's imaginary. In this article I explore how such transpositions operate and why the associated art of mimicry, one of Brian Nelson's many gifts, is so crucial to successful translation.