Examining Modern European poet-translators ‘distantly’

Despite the flourishing of Translation Studies as a discipline, there has been little comparative assessment of modern European poet-translators, much less from a quantitative perspective. This article illustrates the use of statistical analysis of modern European poet-translators to understand literary currents and translation trends within and among national European literatures. Statistical results reveal fundamental differences in the practice of translation among European poets, specifically, twentieth-century Italian, French, Spanish, and English-language poets. It becomes clear which European poets translated the most and from which languages, as do contrasts in translation trends between national literatures through the twentieth century.