EKPHRASIS IN TRANSLATION: VISUAL–TEXTUAL SHIFTS IN JAPANESE HAIKU/HAIGA AND ENGLISH

This paper examines how in the translation of Japanese Haiku and its visual counterpart Haiga into English, visual-textual representations shift. While ekphrasis was conventionally referred to as vivid description of visual art, critics including Jas Elsner and W. J. T. Mitchell have extended its meaning to describe any act of verbal visualisation. This finds a compelling parallel in Japanese Haiku, where it transfers a visual scene into a verbal sketch. Drawing on Jas Elsner’s concept of enargeia (vivid visual presence), this study suggests that English translations of Japanese Haiku often transform the nature of ekphrasis, shifting its emphasis between different sensory experiences. These shifts are not merely linguistic but visual and cultural transformations. This study explores how auditory, visual and symbolic elements are preserved, transformed or diluted in translation. By analysing multiple translations of Matsuo Bashō’s 1694 Nara Chrysanthemum haiku and a Haiga Yosa Buson’s A Little Cuckoo across a Hydrangea, the paper demonstrates how translation reorients perception and redistributes meaning between text and image. Translation, therefore, is not a passive transfer of ekphrasis but an active reimagining of visuality, where linguistic and pictorial elements constantly refract each other.