Проблемы литературного перевода

“To translate a thought exactly, writes T.Retzker, the translator should not follow the form of the ST but take it as a single whole, though consisting of contents, main ideas and style”.

Undoubtedly, every translator has his own method of rendering the style of the original text. If you ask, for instance, several translators to translate one and the same poem there will be definitely several different pieces of literature. More over, in the History of Literary Translation there are many colorful pictures of different literary currents. Method of Modernistic translation, for example, is extremely subjective, introducing subjective style of translation, change of main ideas and images. Romanticism insists on making things mysterious and introducing fantasy elements (basically in poetry).Formalistic Approach opts for literal rendering of every minute element of the ST.

Concerning the translation method some Soviet scientists suggested the term “realistic translation”50 that substituted the term “adequate” or “full-fledged” translation. According to G. Gachechiladze translation is the reflection of the original text just as the latter is the reflection of reality. Having covered some bullet-points of the theory and historical outlook of Literary Translation we would like to approach closer to the style rendering problem within it.

The stylistic equivalence pursuit is the corner stone of Literary Translation. Style retaining is a highly problematic goal and it cannot be achieved completely. Concerning this issue, I.Leviy51 believes that Literary Translation is a hybrid. It is not a monolith work of literature, but interpenetration and conglomeration of two structures: on the one hand – contents and stylistic peculiarities of the original text, on the other hand – the whole complex of specific stylistic features characteristic of translator’s language. In the work of literature i.e. translation these two stratums are in the state of permanent tension, that can results in a contradiction.

The translator is to iron out the contradiction thus, achieving stylistic correspondence. Sometimes a minute detail will be enough for the reader to feel translator’s failure in doing that. As a matter of fact, it happens when translator either weakens the style or resorts to unnecessary exaggerations.

G.Gachechiladze speculates a lot on stylistic weakening opposing it to the full-fledged literary translation, “The main goal of Literary Translation is the enriching of the national literature and serving its interests, whereas literal translation sets the opposite goal – to reproduce the form of the original text.”52 For example, the famous Goethe`s poem “The song of the stranger in the night”  was translated by several Russian poets, “but only Lermontov managed to render the spirit of this poem”, writes Gachechiladze. M. Lermontov: V. Briusov:

Горные вершины На всех вершинах

Спят во тьме ночной, Покой;

Тихие долины В листве, в долинах

Полны свежей мглой; Ни одной

Не пылит дорога, Не дрогнет черты.

Не дрожат листы  Птицы спят в молчании бора

Подожди немного   Подожди только: скоро

Comparing these two poems we realize why namely Lermontov`s poem became a masterpiece, notwithstanding V.Briusov keeps to more exact correspondence of lexical units and prosody.

In Russia literal translation was a real opposition to those who were eager to preserve the inner essence of the original text. For instance, famous and respectable poet A.Fet was the apologist of literalism. He writes, “The translator is happy when he manages, at least partially, to achieve the beauty of form that is inseparable from the original text. The main task of translation is to be literal. No matter it can sound heavy and uneven; the reader with an artistic flair will feel the power of the original text” .

Logic prompts us if even there is a reader with an artistic flair he will not actually need this sort of translation (what about his good taste?). He would rather read the original. Or, perhaps, he would be interested in comparing two texts out of curiosity? Then what is the main function of Literary Translation – to satisfy the inquisitive reader?

With retaining the inner essence of the original text, Gacheciladze points out one interesting detail: the translator must find the “stylistic key” with the help of which translator does not merely translates SD given in the ST using stylistic potential of a separate word. He translates the complex interaction of these Stylistic Devices with the main idea and author’s individual style, thus rendering the “tone” of the ST.

Adequate substitutions briefly reviewed in this Chapter can be interpreted as indispensable constituents of the “stylistic key”. 

Let us take B.Zahoder`s translation. “…They (bees) might think you were only part of the tree.”

“…Они могут подумать, что  это листик”

“Частьдерева”, being translated literally, will sound much worse - it is not the style of a book meant for children.

Much attention was paid by different scholars to literalism (weakening of the style), however, I.Leviy warns us about the opposite phenomenon – the deliberate exaggeration of some stylistic elements in the ST.

Unlike Alan Duff54 he considers that “the translator has no right to embellish”. K.Tchukovsky, a famous Russian writer and translator, who wrote a lot about translation, gives vivid examples concerning unnecessary exaggerations, “Balmont translates “лоно” instead of “грудь”, “стяг” instead of “флаг” and “подъемлю” instead of “поднимаю”.

“Balmont, writes K. Tchukovsky, is ashamed that Witmen uses such a plain language. That is why he sweetens Witmen`s poems with Slovonicisms” .55 Summing up all analyzed ideas and phenomena we should bear in mind that techniques acceptable for the Informative Translation are inadmissible for the Literary one. Beauty does not exclude the accuracy. What is more, it should not be interpreted as prettiness and accuracy as literalism.[2, 175-199]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter II. THE AUTHOR’S WORK

2.1 Poem: “Daffodil”

 

William Wordsworth.

   Daffodils

I  WANDER'D lonely as a cloud  

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,  

When all at once I saw a crowd,  

A host, of golden daffodils;  

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,         

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.  

 

Continuous as the stars that shine  

And twinkle on the Milky Way,  

They stretch'd in never-ending line  

Along the margin of a bay:  

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,  

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.  

 

The waves beside them danced; but they  

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:  

A poet could not but be gay,   

In such a jocund company:  

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought  

What wealth the show to me had brought:  

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie  

In vacant or in pensive mood,  

They flash upon that inward eye  

Which is the bliss of solitude;  

And then my heart with pleasure fills,  

And dances with the daffodils.[5]

 

 

 

 

ВИЛЬЯМ ВОРДСВОРТ 
Случалось, один по лесу я бродил

 
Случалось, один по лесу я бродил, 
Как облако над долинами и холмами. 
Цветы нарциссы повсюду находил. 
Они стелились яркими коврами. 
 
Я мог долго, долго за ними идти. 
Они колыхались и светились на ветру, 
Словно звёзды на Млечном пути. 
Домой возвращался я лишь к утру. 
 
От нарциссов никуда не деться. 
Они повсюду, сколько хватит взгляда. 
На них нельзя не заглядеться. 
Глаза разбегаются от их наряда. 
 
Их тысячи, они движутся в ритме танца, 
Как приливы и отливы волн, 
Превосходя блеском цветущего глянца. 
И колыхаясь, как на волнах чёлн. 
 
Они радуют глаз и слух поэта. 
Я, не переставая, на них глядел. 
Заворожила меня прелесть эта. 
Я сам с ними расцвести захотел. 
 
Теперь, лёжа на кушетке в полночный час, 
Бездумен я или полон дум, 
Чувствую, как те нарциссы радуют мой глаз. 
Одиночество уже не тревожит мой усталый ум. 
Сердце моё радостно стучит, 
И в вихре вальса с цветами кружит.

 

 

 

 

2.2 Story: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”

The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests; then, recognizing each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction. "News?" asked the taller of the two. "The best," replied Severus Snape. The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge. The men's long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they marched.

"Thought I might be late," said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out of sight as the branches of overhanging trees broke the moonlight. "It was a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will be good?"

Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that led off the lane. The high hedge curved into them, running off into the distance beyond the pair of imposing wrought-iron gates barring the men’s way. Neither of them broke step: In silence both raised their left arms in a kind of salute and passed straight through, as though the dark metal was smoke.

The yew hedges muffled the sound of the men’s footsteps. There was a rustle somewhere to their right: Yaxley drew his wand again pointing it over his companion’s head, but the source of the noise proved to be nothing more than a pure-white peacock, strutting majestically along the top of the hedge.

“He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks …” Yaxley thrust his wand back under his cloak with a snort.

A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight drive, lights glinting in the diamond paned downstairs windows. Somewhere in the dark garden beyond the hedge a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled beneath their feet as Snape and Yaxley sped toward the front door, which swung inward at their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it.

The hallway was large, dimly lit, and sumptuously decorated, with a magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the wall followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, then Snape turned the bronze handle.

The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate table. The room’s usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, they were drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scene: an apparently unconscious human figure hanging upside down over the table, revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare, polished surface of the table below. None of the people seated underneath this singular sight were looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly below it. He seemed unable to prevent himself from glancing upward every minute or so.

“Yaxley. Snape,” said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. “You are very nearly late.”

The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As they drew nearer, however, his face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike, with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow.

“Severus, here,” said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his immediate right. “Yaxley – beside Dolohov.”

The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around the table followed Snape, and it was to him that Voldemort spoke first.

“So?”

“My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his current place of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall.”

The interest around the table sharpened palpably: Some stiffened, others fidgeted, all gazing at Snape and Voldemort.

“Saturday … at nightfall,” repeated Voldemort. His red eyes fastened upon Snape’s black ones with such intensity that some of the watchers looked away, apparently fearful that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of the gaze. Snape, however, looked calmly back into Voldemort’s face and, after a moment or two, Voldemort’s lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.

“Good. Very good. And this information comes –“

“ – from the source we discussed,” said Snape.

“My Lord.”

Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at Voldemort and Snape. All faces turned to him.

“My Lord, I have heard differently.”

Yaxley waited, but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on, “Dawlish, the Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved until the thirtieth, the night before the boy turns seventeen.”

Snape was smiling.

“My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail; this must be it. No doubt a Confundus Charm has been placed upon Dawlish. It would not be the first time; he is known to be susceptible.”

“I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain,” said Yaxley.

“If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain,” said Snape. “I assure you, Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in the protection of Harry Potter. The Order believes that we have infiltrated the Ministry.”

“The Order’s got one thing right, then, eh?” said a squat man sitting a short distance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy giggle that was echoed here and there along the table.

Voldemort did not laugh. His gaze had wandered upward to the body revolving slowly overhead, and he seemed to be lost in thought.

“My Lord,” Yaxley went on, “Dawlish believes an entire party of Aurors will be used to transfer the boy –“

Voldemort held up a large white hand, and Yaxley subsided at once, watching resentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape.

“Where are they going to hide the boy next?”

“At the home of one of the Order,” said Snape. “The place, according to the source, has been given every protection that the Order and Ministry together could provide. I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there, my Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which might give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments to break through the rest.”

“Well, Yaxley?” Voldemort called down the table, the firelight glinting strangely in his red eyes. “Will the Ministry have fallen by next Saturday?”

Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders.

“My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have – with difficulty, and after great effort – succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.”

Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his neighbor, Dolohov, a man with a long, twisted face, clapped him on the back.

“It is a start,” said Voldemort. “But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the Minister’s life will set me back a long way.”

“Yes – my Lord, that is true – but you know, as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Minister himself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I think, be easy now that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down.”

“As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he has converted the rest,” said Voldemort. “At any rate, it remains unlikely that the Ministry will be mine before next Saturday. If we cannot touch the boy at his destination, then it must be done while he travels.”

“We are at an advantage there, my Lord,” said Yaxley, who seemed determined to receive some portion of approval. “We now have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or uses the Floo Network, we shall know immediately.”

“He will not do either,” said Snape. “The Order is eschewing any form of transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to do with the place.”

“All the better,” said Voldemort. “He will have to move in the open. Easier to take, by far.”

Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he went on, “I shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives is due more to my errors than to his triumphs.”

The company around the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of them, by his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry Potter’s continued existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any of them, still addressing the unconscious body above him.

“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be.”

At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, a terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked downward, startled, for the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet.

“Wormtail,” said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone, and without removing his eyes from the revolving body above, “have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?”

“Yes, m-my Lord,” gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had been sitting so low in his chair that it appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied. Now he scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver.

“As I was saying,” continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of his followers, “I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter.”

The faces around him displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced that he wanted to borrow one of their arms.

“No volunteers?” said Voldemort. “Let’s see … Lucius, I see no reason for you to have a wand anymore.”

Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy in the firelight, and his eyes were sunken and shadowed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

“My Lord?”

“Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.”

“I …”

Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight ahead, quite as pale as he was, her long blonde hair hanging down her back, but beneath the table her slim fingers closed briefly on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort, who held it up in front of his red eyes, examining it closely.

“What is it?”

“Elm, my Lord,” whispered Malfoy.

“And the core?”

“Dragon – dragon heartstring.”

“Good,” said Voldemort. He drew out his wand and compared the lengths. Lucius Malfoy made an involuntary movement; for a fraction of a second, it seemed he expected to receive Voldemort’s wand in exchange for his own. The gesture was not missed by Voldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously.

“Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?”

Some of the throng sniggered.

“I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough for you? But I have noticed that you and your family seem less than happy of late … What is it about my presence in your home that displaces you, Lucius?”

“Nothing – nothing, my Lord!”

“Such lies Lucius … “

The soft voice seemed to hiss on even after the cruel mouth had stopped moving. One or two of the wizards barely repressed a shudder as the hissing grew louder; something heavy could be heard sliding across the floor beneath the table.

The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort’s chair. It rose, seemingly endlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort’s shoulders: its neck the thickness of a man’s thigh; its eyes, with their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking. Voldemort stroked the creature absently with long thin fingers, still looking at Lucius Malfoy.

“Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my return, my rise to power, not the very thing they professed to desire for so many years?”

“Of course, my Lord,” said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as he wiped sweat from his upper lip. “We did desire it – we do.”

To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, stiff nod, her eyes averted from Voldemort and the snake. To his right, his son, Draco, who had been gazing up at the inert body overhead, glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terrified to make eye contact.