The principle aim of this dissertation was to investigate the translatability of poetic language in prose texts from a practice-led position based on a translation of Kenneth White’s House of Tides into German. In this context, the author intended to examine what impact the use of poetic language has on the effect of the source text, to identify potential translation problems resulting from this poetic language use and to determine what translation strategies can be used in order to produce a target text providing an effect as close to that of the source text as possible. To this end, as a first step, the extra- and intra-textual factors were analysed based on Christiane Nord’s translation-oriented text analysis. This analysis revealed a high frequency of word and sound
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figures, which, as a second step, were assessed for their translatability by comparing selected text examples to their respective German translation. Translating word figures proved less complicated than translating sound figures, which was attributed to the fact that this kind of stylistic devices do not, in contrast to most sound figures, operate on sentence but on word level. While translating the source text’s sound figures required repeated use of compensatory procedures, the etymological relationship between German and English allowed for a straightforward reproduction in the translation more frequently than anticipated. Notwithstanding that the source text’s effect could not entirely be retained in the translation, the intensive engagement with a literary text such as House of Tides led to a change in the translator‘s perception of the translation process as a merely technical activity towards an understanding of translation as an artistic act.