The translation of a poetic text differs fundamentally from the translation of prose, as it involves the challenge of reproducing not only the semantic content of the original but also its metrical, strophic, rhythmic, and phonetic features in an equivalent form. YeghisheCharents’s translations of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky offer a clear illustration of how the Armenian poet reproduced the rhythm, metre, and overall intonational contour of the original, achieving an almost perfect degree of translational equivalence.Eight works, or excerpts from works, translated by Charents from Mayakovsky were published in the April–May issue №4–5 of the journal Norughi in 1930. Given that Mayakovsky’s poetry had exerted a considerable influence on Charents’s own work, both formally and ideologically, since the early 1920s, it may be assumed that many of these works had already been translated and were submitted for publication only a few days after the tragic death of the Russian poet on 14 April 1930.These works, which belong to the early period of Mayakovsky’s literary career 1913–1920, employ a wide variety of metres and versification principles. In each case, Charents demonstrated considerable poetic mastery in identifying a metrically equivalent form that enabled him to translate the Russian poet’s work without substantial alterations to its rhythmic structure. This was made possible, above all, by Charents’s consistent inclination to assimilate creatively new forms of poetic composition from Russian and world literature, as well as by the fact that he had already made extensive use of Mayakovsky’s accentual verse in his own earlier works.By presenting parallel excerpts from the Russian originals and their Armenian translations, this article examines their metrical and rhythmic principles, as well as their similarities and differences.

KeywordsVladimir Mayakovsky YeghisheCharents poetic translation metrical equivalence syllabo-tonic metres dolniks accentual verse.