This dissertation uses Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theories to explain the hybrid nature of literary translation, of poetry and of Irish and Scottish modern literature. It focuses on Seamus Heaney, but also touches upon John Burnside, W. N. Herbert, James Kelman, Liz Lochhead and Irvine Welsh (in Scotland) and on Marina Carr, Ciaran Carson, Brian Friel and Paul Muldoon (in Ireland). Following Bakhtin it is claimed that there are two types of translation: 'translation with just one voice' and 'translation with two voices'. In the latter type, two languages and two cultures are used simultaneously. Chapter 2 studies the relationship between the material and the spiritual worlds in Burnside and Heany. Chapters 3 and 4 show that the language used by these authors is hybrid regarding style variety, use of narrative language in poetry or the mixture of standard English and local dialect. The last chapter tries to perform an in-depth reading of the alegorical poems included in The Haw Lantern (1987), by Seamus Heaney.