William Butler Yeats was an English-speaking Irish author, who was actively involved in the Irish cultural and political developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was one of the key figures of the Celtic twilight and among the most prominent English language authors of the twentieth century. This master's thesis discusses poetry translation, both in theory and specifically, based on Veno Taufer and Nada Grošelj's translations of Yeats’s poems. The first part describes the main features of poetry and different approaches and models of translating poetry, compares Slovene and English language-specific qualities of poetry, and points to certain characteristics of the two languages that can pose problems for translators. Yeats’s life and work are presented, followed by the analysis of his language, style and poetics, and the overview of the reception of his work in the Slovene cultural area. The second part includes the analyses of twelve poems by Yeats and the comparisons of the translations. The poems were selected based on the different types of discrepancies between the two translations or between the translation and the original. The thesis is concluded with a concise summary of the findings.
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