Typical Errors in Students’ Ukrainian Translations of English-Language Poetry: The Case of Translating Louise Glück’s “Poem”
Abstract
Student translation contests have become a productive form of training and assessment in Ukrainian translation programs: they combine clear rules, public discussion, and a strong motivational component, while also producing a corpus of comparable student translations for the same source text. In this sense, a poetic translation contest can be treated as an educational instrument that makes visible recurrent decision patterns, both successful and unsuccessful, across a cohort of student translators. This paper examines 21 English–Ukrainian translations produced in 2023 for a student translation contest, all based on Louise Glück’s contemporary poem “Poem.” The study applies qualitative error analysis supported by quantitative frequency counts of error types across the corpus of student translations. It proposes a heuristic typology, covering formal deviations, lexical-semantic errors, denotative errors, stylistic mismatch, unjustified gendering, and related shifts in voice and person, graphic–punctuation interventions, opposite-meaning shifts, interpretive additions, compression/omission, and cross-linguistic interference (Russianisms). The analysis indicates that the most recurrent problems cluster around lexical choice and collocation, interpretive changes that introduce meanings absent in the source, and formal domestication through rhyme, rhythm, and altered lineation that displaces the source text’s poetics. On this basis, the article formulates practical recommendations for Ukrainian students preparing for poetry-translation contests, emphasizing contextual reading, register awareness, careful handling of ambiguity, form-sensitive decision-making, and systematic checks against cross-linguistic interference.
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