Практикум по художественному переводу__

ББК 81.2Англ-7

© Казакова Т. А., 2003
© Издательство «Союз», 2003
© Панкевич А. В.,
ISBN 5-94033-150-5                    оформление обложки, 2003

I have designed this book as a manual for practising in literary translation from English into Russian and from Russian into English. It includes texts of English, American and Russian poetry, prose and drama provided with tasks for comparison and translation. Besides, it presents pieces of Celtic and Native Amer­ican folklore in English and Siberian folklore in Russian, which appears to be interesting material for comparative reading and translation. It is a practical manual, yet it includes introduction into the theory of translation, as well as some general ideas about basic principles of translating poetry, prose, drama and folklore.

To make the manual more useful and comprehensible for students in literary translation 1 have structured it according to the traditional classification into the sections of poetry, prose, drama and folklore. Although not without a common ground, each of them suggests translation problems of its own and involves special translation techniques. The order of the succession is more or less subjective; one can choose any section to start with. I have started with poetry because it seems more evident as the transla­tion task with its steady textual principles and obvious correla­tion between form and content.

The selection of literary works reflects the consideration of the difference between not only literary but also translation traditions in English and Russian cultures. The Russian school of literary translation is probably more creative whereas the English tradition tends towards semantic rather than functional transfer, which is, in its way, more literal. Anyhow, this is a matter of tendencies rather than sets, though at times the controversy may

appear quite hot.

_

_______ Практикум по художественному переподу______

Each section oi'lhc manual includes introductory notes with some comments on the author, his major literary principles and works and with some helpful hints for a translator of the se­lected pieces. Most often tasks for comparison present more than one translation of the original and are supplied with exercises, recommendations and questions about problems to be solved. Usually translation tasks include a text shorter and easier than in a comparison task. Exercises for translation may differ from ex­ercises for comparison.

To work with the manual, one will need elementary knowledge and skills in the theory and practice of translation as well as some experience in stylistics and comparative reading of English and Russian literature. It is recommended that the stu­dents should read more about the authors under consideration.

The list of literary sources of selected texts is not com­plete, for the author of the manual has accumulated some of the material owing to translator archives or some other unpublished sources, personal archive included. In some sections I have used my own translations, on various reasons: to demonstrate a differ­ence or to show a direction or to fill in the gap when the text is interesting but there is no translation at hand.

It is my hope that this manual will provide a useful view of the dimensions of literary translation, a helpful guide for trans­lation practices and will add something of value to the knowl­edge and skills of the students of translation.

This textbook has come to life due to many people who contributed either to its content, or structure, or last but not least gave moral support to the author.

1 highly appreciate the professionalism of Paul Williams, the editor of the English text in this manual. I also wish to thank all my colleagues, and in particular, professors L. O. Gurcvich, President of the Union of Translators of Russia (Moscow), and V. V. Kabakchi (St. Petersburg), whose helpful hints and crit­ical reading of the book appeared very productive. I am very

Imagery in Translation

grateful to St. Petersburg Branch of the UTR presided by P. S. Bruk for the professional and moral support aswell as for the help in collecting the material and working out thede­sign of the manual. My special thanks are alsoto the studentsof St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg Institute of Exter­nalEconomic Relations, Economics and Law and NevskyInsti­tute of Language and Culture who were very creative and toler­antwhile I imposed this material on them as a pilot programme.Finally yet importantly, I acknowledge my particular debt to thelate Professor E. G. Etkind whose lectures, books andrecom­mendations provided the corner stone for developing of my views and skills in the theory and practice of literary translation.

T. A. Kazakova

Imagery in Translation

INTRODUCTION

There can be no argument that the translator of literary rks should achieve a close relationship between the theory and ctice of translation. For one thing, the choice of the principles ranslation may not be purely intuitive because the translator essarily takes into account such matters as the aim of the trans-on, the temporal and geographic gap between the creation of source text and possible readers of the target text, the cultural between the original author and the reader of the translation, kind of reader the target text is intended for, etc. Each aspect vides a problem for consideration and solution in the course ranslating. One of the eternal problems is the choice of the hod of translation.

To distinguish between such methods of translation as lit-', literary and poetic is necessary in examining the way of slating literature. Literal translation is obviously jised when e is a need to observe the rules of the source language and and to present them in their integrity to the target culture. It is lite reasonable approach when we translate for philological ?oses, e.g., ancient epic texts or very unusual texts remote я the target culture. It is quite legitimate when translating most nical texts. Yet even such scholarly texts as those from the I of linguistics may not always be translated literally. I wit-;ed such a communicative conflict when the Russian linguis-erm «номинация» was literally translated as "nomination" i Russian lecturer to an American audience (Princeton Uni-ity). It required some time and bilingual discussion before i the Russian scholar and the audience came to a sort of con-us using the term of "naming", which, in its turn, usually esponds to the Russian «именование» and does not fully co-ie with the Russian term «номинация». Literal translation is

definitely, not the best method to translate most literary works for the wider public. All attempts to pursue this approach inevitably come up against the obvious fact that the literary functions of words do not coincide in the source and target languages. Apart from polysemy, words compatible and comparable in meaning evoke different, if not incompatible, aesthetic and emotional as­sociations and thus have quite different associative force in the source and target languages. The Russian word «белогвардеец» can easily be translated literally as "a white guard" in many in­stances, but not when it is used ironically or with some associa­tive purpose. Translating an ironical passage from The Master and Margarita, Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor gave a literal substitute for Bulgakov's text:

«Какие-то странные мысли хлынули в голову заболевшему поэту... «Что он сделал? Я не постигаю;.. Что-нибудь особенное есть в этих словах: «Буря мглою...»? Не понимаю! Повезло! Повезло! - вдруг ядовито заключил Рюхин. - Стрелял, стрелял в него этот белогвардеец и раздробил бедро и обеспечил бессмертие...»

Strange thoughts poured into the stricken poet's head. "What did he do? I don't get it... What's so special about the words: 'Storm with mist the heavens covers...'? I don't understand!... He was lucky, lucky, that's all!" Ryukhin concluded with sudden venom. "He was shot, shot by that white guard, who smashed his hip and guaranteed his immortality..."

Something familiar to every Russian from childhood - the line of poetry and death in a duel - is immediately associated with the name of Pushkin, while the word «белогвардеец» used by Ryukhin is no less suggestive of the primitive proletarian writers of the 1920s-1930s. Yet this word does not prompt an average English reader to make the association with Pushkin. The trans­lated text becomes enigmatic and remote, which, presumatly, made its translators supply the reader with a kind of commentary:

_______ Практикум по художественному переводу___

"Ryukhin, a second-rate Soviet poet, broods about why Pushkin got famous ('Storm with mist' is a line from a famous poem by Pushkin, much loved by Bulgakov). Ryukhin is of such primitive culture that he refers to the man who killed Pushkin in a duel in 1837 as a white guard, a contemporary term of abuse, meaning those who fought on the side of the monarchy during the Russian Civil War." One might doubt whether this commentary makes the En­glish text any more comprehensible, or the author's sarcasm about the "proletarian flair for enemies" at least easier to appreciate. Probably, the translation would have acquired more associative power if a different quotation from Pushkin were used, one more familiar to the English reader (perhaps just the title Eugene One-gin) and the circumstances of the notorious duel were elucidated in the text (just the name of d'Anthes or the word "duel").

The term "literary translation" is somewhat vague. In Rus­sian, it is usually opposed to the term «информативный, или документальный перевод» and describes translation as aiming predominantly at the target language rules rather than the source language ones. The Russian term «литературный перевод» would be fitting to define the method in general. This method is defi­nitely a necessary and important instrument for different cultural traditions to communicate and should apply to translating social and political writing or fiction, while the term "poetic transla­tion" as a variety of literary translation is associated with trans­lating poetry and presupposes some inevitable liberties in the choice of the target language substitutes for the source languagl elements. However, we should differentiate between the ideas and principles of literary and poetic methods of translation.

The term poetic translation may be considered to apply to a particular type of translating in which not only linguistic and literary rules but also creative competition and imagery matter. , On the other hand, by literary translation we normally mean just that the target language rules are observed in preference to the ■ source language rules in slavish copy. Poetic translation involves

Imagery in Translation

an unpredictable area of transformations in the probable proj tion of the source text onto the target language through the \ ception of the translator. Some transformations of this leind not determined by interlinguistic relationship but by cultura even personal preferences on the part of the translator. Thus poetic translation the source text acquires probable rather t causal character. Multiple probabilities are a particular featun poetic translation, while another important feature is irreversi ity. From this point of view, poetic translation is what is soi times described as "artistic translation," though the term "ar tic" is too general to apply to textual material. What is to be < cussed and practised in this book is concerned with the met! or, rather, art of poetic translation understood in the meaning the Russian term «художественный перевод».

There is always some debatable polarity in any poetic tre lation. On the one hand, it has to preserve the authenticity of original, that is to say, its foreignness in the target language, wl on the other part, it must be meaningful to the target culturi both form and idiom and thus acquire naturalness. This polai in various terms, has been considered in many works on tran; tion. One of the most famous registers of the dual principle: translation was produced by Theodore Savory who fixed a m ber of oppositions in the list of requirements for a correct tran tion.¹

The necessity of keeping both targets in view at the s£ time was firmly indicated by the Czech linguist Jifi Levy,² also discussed and reformulated by many others. In the Russ tradition many terins have been used to name this quality, oni the best devised was A. V. Fyodorov's «полноценность пере

' Т. Savory, The Art of Translation (London: Cape, 1957). T. Sa considers translation as a way of overcoming barriers in literary commui tion and puts forward a list of contradictory positions and principles ii form of oppositions.

² Иржи Левый. Искусство перевода. - М.: Прогресс, 1974.

Практикум по художественному переводу_____

("translation of full value")-³Ultimately, the task might seem ossible due to the nature of theconflict between two cultures languages, and to thesubjective character of the translating rument (errare humanum est). From this point of view, any slation is inevitably a failure.Yet there are always victories achievements in seeking away totransform a foreign picture le world into something bothnew and comprehensible for the et culture.In thisrespect, the ultimate task of translation is evable, to acertain extent. This needle-narrow pass between impossible and the achievable represents the core of poetic slation. We may consider it from the point of view of functions erthan constants. The most important function of poetic slation is that of intercultural communication.

Formulated in basic terms, the intercultural task of poetic islation may be expressed as follows: to translate a literary k from a language toanother language means to lose as lit-is possible of itsoriginal cultural authenticity while preserv-as much aspossible of its intercultural value. In the other •ds, theaim is to reconstruct the imagery of the source text i system into the target culture by means of the target lan-ge and literary traditions. New readers should make efforts ippreciate a foreign system of imagery but the difficulty must dominate the translated text lest it should become dull and alien be target culture — so that the text in the target language should <e sense and bring aesthetic and emotional pleasure to the target ler.

Such terms as"pleasure" and "dull" involve the idea of the ational component in poetictranslation while the notion of nse" appeals to therational assessment. Normally, these two jor aspects of the poetic translation process co-operate, and modus vivendi is based on their natural relationship. Presum-y, translation techniques used to deal with literary works nec-

³ А. В. Федоров. Основы общей теории перевода. - М.: Высшая ша, 1968.

Imagery in Translation

essarily include both reason and intuition, rational and emotional appreciation of the comparative qualities of the original text and its reconstruction in the target language. Generations of transla­tors from ancient times to the present day have developed and perfected many useful techniques that can be traced both in the translated texts and in translators' pronouncements about literary translation in general and about their own experience in particu­lar. The unique school and tradition of literary (poetic) transla­tion that has formed in Russia and impressive achievements in other countries over the last three centuries provide rich and broad data for both exploration and direct usage by new generations of translators and philologists. It is especially interesting to com­pare different national traditions and their attitudes when they compete in the same direction, i.e., in translating from Russian into English.

Rules and requirements constitute the practical aspect of translation activity, while its theoretical basis involves many fields of knowledge such as psychology, informatics, linguistics, herme-neutics, logic, etc. Of special interest is the impact of ideas of symmetry, isomorphism, game and probability on the general the­ory of translation and on the theory of poetic translation in partic­ular. Considered in terms of heuristic and game, translation re­veals such aspects as game strategies, preferences, drives, roles, random decisions, etc. One of the productive directions of re­search in the theory of poetic translation may be investigation into the nature of translator's preferences in selecting substitute linguistic units and stylistic means of reconstructing the source imagery of a poem or a piece of prose. When translating Shakes­peare's "yellow leaves" (sonnet 73) Marshak uses the epithet «багряный» instead of «желтый» and reconstructs the simile "eyes are nothing like the sun" (sonnet 130) as «ее глаза на звезды не похожи», he seemingly takes liberties; yet there is some logic behind these liberties which need to be identified and defined not as something arbitrary but in respect to the system of imagery as

a whole.

_

_______ Практикум по художественному переводу______

Usually the category of text has appeared in the centre of most theoretical conceptions of poetic translation. They speak about source and target texts even more often than of source and target languages. Yet of late, the conceptual structure of this category in linguistics and in translation studies has undergone considerable changes. Meanwhile, much depends upon this concept in the solu­tion of such basic problem of translation as the adequacy, or "cor­rectness" of the relationship between the source and target texts. What is to be considered "wrong" or "correct" if we do not trans­late the source text literally, that is, as a set of words? Numerous transformations that reveal themselves in the target text when com­pared with the source only prove that the translator measures the text not in words but in something else. This something is defined in many such terms as "meaning", or "sense", or "contents", or "idea", or "imagery", etc. All of them have the same drawback, and that is their vagueness, an uncertainty that does not allow them to be measured in palpable and countable units.

Linguists are skilful in seeking new terms. Thus, a new concept has arisen of intertextuality as a special feature of imag­inative (and not only) literature.⁴ The term implies that the reader (translator as well) translates or decodes the text in a process of personal semiosis, that is, using a different set of systems to that urhich the author of the text did or some other reader may do. Then it may be easy to understand the process of translation as intersemiotic and interpersonal at the same time. From this point of view, the reader is not a consumer of the text but its co-produ­cer. The idea is as old as Zen philosophy, yet it is as productive nowadays. To put it in concrete terms, the text is nothing but a set of graphic symbols on a sheet of paper until it is filled in with sense and imagery, emotions and values by its reader-author. We can only poetically translate what we reconstruct about the text, that is, its potential semiotic function in the target culture.

This type of semiosis, in fact, the translator's semiosis,

¹ Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies. London - New York, Routledge,

Imagery in Translation

may be considered as an heuristic process of sorting out pro bilities. Unlike the average reader's semiosis, the translate sorting of substitutes is complicated by a great number of e; considerations such as the difference between the source target languages, potential readers' expectations, cultural inc( patibility, personal preferences, and the like. Yet, primarily, translator's semiosis is bound by the necessity of reconstn ing the source system of imagery as a whole and not as a ch of independent substitutes, which means that the resulting tersemiotic complex must be a piece of literary art accordinj the criteria of the target language, literature and reader.

The translator may play different games with such an tersemiotic complex. Sometimes he appears a keen rival to author, carried away by the idea of creating a text in the tai language equal in its imaginative power to the source text, tho] different in linguistic, literary and cultural qualities. A brilli example of such a type was the Russian poet and translator \ ily Zhukovsky (1783-1852) whose views on translation w those of poetic rivalry. According to the Princeton Encyclo dia of Poetry and Poetics, "it would be difficult to draw a 1 between his original and translated works as he often used latter for his most intimate personal outpourings, frequer improving on the original"⁵. Such rivalry took place in the 1 tory of many European literatures and contributed to the de\ opment of interliterary communication. The main principle such translation is the reconstruction of the source systerr imagery as observed by the translator rather than its precise tails in the target language. This way is creative as well as n leading and applicable only to situations where the target lite ture (and culture at large) has not yet assimilated the basic i tures of the source one. There is an everlasting discussion how to classify such a principle of translating, imitation

" Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, edited by Alex Pr inger. Princeton University Press, 1990.