The article describes and analyses connections established between Roman Jakobson’s scholarly legacy and the topic of translation in a selection of academic reference works. The aim in doing so is twofold: first, to look beyond the conventionalised image of Jakobson as an influential scholar for several disciplines, such as translation studies, linguistics and semiotics, and to provide an overview of the actual reception of his ideas on the level of general academic knowledge as presented by scholarly reference works in these (...) fields. Another aim is to find out whether and how Jakobson’s ideas on translation are seen to relate to his other ideas concerning language and communication. It appears that — while there also exist some differences fieldwise as well as among individual reference works — the general reception of Jakobson is based predominantly on just two of his articles (out of his overall legacy of several hundred works) and to a large extent ignores the inner logic of Jakobson’s thought as it manifests in his different works (i.e. there are few connections made between his ideas expressed in his different works). (shrink)

The present paper focuses on the similarities and differences between the formal characteristics of the traditional Japanese haiku and the translated haiku. more specifically, on the relations between the 5-7-5 syllable pattern in the Japanese haiku, and the patterns of syllable arrangement employed in the translations. Due to the influence of the target culture context, there emerge certain conventions in rendering the haiku form. the appearance of which is observed in the body of 420 haiku translations, made by 7 translators. (...) On the basis of the overall frequency of appearance, as well as in respect to individual translators, tentative characterisation is proposed as to which types of syllable arrangement patterns can be considered more form-oriented than others in the context of the translated haiku, i.e., an attempt is made to mark the boundary between the "haiku-like" patterns and the "unhaiku-like" patterns. (shrink)