This book undertakes a comparative study of translation and original. The author develops analytical instruments and procedures for the systematic study of poetic discourse in translation in order to describe the ‘translational interpretation’, i.e. the interpretation of the original as it emerges from the translation). This study most of all reflects on the possibilities of translation comparison and description per se. It studies the principles of translation comparison, its limits and possibilities, and its central concepts. Before presenting his own proposal for a comparative procedure, the author critically evaluates several existing methods, particularly those of Toury, Van Leuven-Zwart and the German transfer-oriented approach. The theoretical considerations are amply illustrated by analyses of translated works of poets as Rutger Kopland and Robert Lowell. The book also contains an extensive case study into the translations of a selection of Shakespeare’s sonnets by the German poet Paul Celan.