Imagery in Translation. Катерина:С Борисом Григорьичем

Катерина: С Борисом Григорьичем.

Удар грома.

Ах! (Падает без чувств на руки мужа.)

Кабанова: Что, сынок! Куда воля-то ведет! Говорила я, так ты слушать не хотел. Вот и дождался!

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Is there any other way of translation of the word «Гроза»
rather than Thunder? Consider the variants and their possible ex­
pressive connotations.

• Analyse conceptual and stylistic features of the source
text and choose a stylistic key to them in English.

• Note some special lexical and grammatical problems for
translation in this text.

• Note some intercultural problems which might require a
translator's commentary to the text.

• Consider different ways for the translation of emphatic
structures to reproduce the emotional tension of the source text in
English.

• Read the translated text aloud to feel into its theatrical
perspectives.

• Discuss the result in comparison with other translations
of the text.

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Imagery in Translation

SECTION 4: TRANSLATING FOLKLORE

FOLKLORE TRANSLATION TECHNIQUES

A folklore text is a contradictory phenomenon: it is a writ­ten version of an oral story, whose status is consequently changed. What was meant to be reproduced in audible form has acquired the form of a graphic document, while its grammar, style and imagery are based on the oral principles and its mnemonic nature comes into conflict with itself. As soon as a folk story is regis­tered, it becomes something new, yet retains some of its oral fea­tures. These Sfeatures are very important when we come to the translation of such texts. They may be called the folklore mne­monic formulas and include:

• time and space markers

• names of mythical or magic fairy personages

• symbols of the sacred

• formulas of folklore logic

• verses in a folklore tale.

These features make a folklore text recognisable as such and it is necessary to reproduce them in translation. But to be adequately reproduced in another language, each of them requires special translation techniques. Thus, folklore formulas, like Once upon a time or Долго ли, коротко ли, differ from tradition to tradition, and should be translated according to their mnemonic temporal or spatial functions by drawing bn the target folklore heritage, while at the same time saving some of their original form. Folklore names more often than not are dealt with by imita­tive techniques (Baba-Yaga, гоблин, Кухулин). In general, though, they deserve to be considered more carefully.

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Time and space markers. Folklore is a form of collective memory based on the frequent repetition of the same text. Under such a principle, the text should include features convenient for reproduction. They must be simple, steady, informative and func­tional to be easily recalled and reproduced. Such features, recog­nisable to both tellers and listeners, hardened into mnemonic for­mulas that prompted how to begin a story, how to develop it, how to stir the audience, to maintain the idea of sacred knowledge, to refer to some other story, to complete the tale, and so on. Each national folk culture has developed formulas of its own. An En­glish (Celtic) folk talc would start with a special "fairy tale time formula": once; once upon a time; long, long ago; in the far-off times; in the days gone by, when the world was young, etc. In such formulas the main temporal feature is the uncertainty of time and space and their belonging to some other scale of dimensions. To express this, in such formulas once usually occurs with the spatial marker there (there once lived, once there was, there once stood, etc.). There may be replaced by a particular place, e. g. a mountain, a village, or a lake. Here is a typical mnemonic pat­tern, in a Welsh tale about fairies:

Once upon a time, in the days gone by, there were green rings in which Tylwith Teg, the fairies, used to meet to sing and dance all night.

To translate it into Russian, we need to recall similar for­mulas that fulfil the same functions but may differ in their form; sometimes it is necessary to invent a formula because it may in­troduce a mythical feature unknown to the target folklore:

Некогда, в давпие-предавпие времена, волшебни­цы Тилвит Тег собирались вместе, водили хороводы и пели. На таких местах трава зеленела особенно ярко и образовывала круглые площадки, ведьмины кольца. The source text uses the spatial formula "green rings," which is not widely known in Russian folklore in association with

fairies.

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Практикум по художественному переводу

Names of mythical or magic fairy personages. Another folklore feature that goes from text to text within a national tradi­tion is names. Fairy-tale personages are usually named according to either old mythical tradition or to a current habit of naming. The major problem for translation is the first principle, mythical tradi­tion. Appearing in many tales and situations, an imaginative being acquires a body, a character, a string of deeds and relations. Conse­quently its name becomes a real word that has a referential ingenu­ity. When re-named Baba-Yaga, the Russian Баба-Яга loses her material background, most of linguistic and cultural connections, and in fact becomes a fiction, just a name without flesh and blood. Some translators have sensed this and tried to transform the name into some other substitute, more or less familiar to the target cul­ture. Usually, this was a witch. But then the personage changed accordingly into something different; it took on the flesh and blood of an English witch, who is dressed in a black cloak, with a pointed hat and a switch in her hand. Such details as the flying mortar or the honey leg will not accord with this transformation, nor will any other special features and functions of Баба-Яга.

At the first sight, the Russian name Леший is easier to deal with in translation, for it has some semantic background connect­ing it with such words as «лес», «лесной», and «лесовик». But there is no true English counterpart to the image: an Elf is more subtle and fair, a boggard more solid; neither includes the com­ponent of "forest" in the name. Therefore, we may prefer some­thing like Forest Sspirit, Forest-being, yet both names are more of a description, not as natural as a mythical name must be. If we use the technique of coining a new word, it could become a Wood-ster {Wood + Monster), or a Woodle (Wood + Boggle), which may seem a bit unusual, but in its very strangeness there is a mark of the source mythical lore.

Some names are quite a challenge to a translator; such as the Hedley Kow, a tricky spirit in the North-East of England that may become a cow head, a pot, a stone or whatever, Hedley is the name of a mythic place, a spatial formula. There is a real Hedley

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Imagery in Translation

on the Hill inland from Newcastle upon Tyne, though in the fairy­tale it acquires a magic function of a haunted place. If we imitate the semantics of the name in Russian, it will come out something like Корова из Хедли, which is not quite comprehensible for a cow is only one of the possible shapes of the boggle in the story. The translator found an intermediary way by adding the idea of bogy to the name: Коровий Оборотень. Transformation takes place in the tale, and there is something of a cow in it. Yet the local touch of Hedley, the imitation of reality, is lost with such a name in Russian.

Symbols of the sacred. A symbol is an important part of the mnemonic techniques in a folklore text, and it varies from nation to nation. The translation problem may not be the symbol itself but the symbolic function as such. One and the same word may play a symbolic role in one culture and lack a symbolic pow­er in another. Unlike such simple symbols as a ring, a flower, a tree, a mountain, and so on, there exist symbols that are known to the source culture and sound meaningless or strange to the target one, like the Russian «избушка на курьих ножках», the abode of Baba-Yaga, indeed any abode in the dark magic forest, and a symbol of supernatural, evil forces. In Russian, it is a mnemonic formula, readily recognisable as referring to the world of dark forest power, a passage to the realm of the dead. Nobody really recognises such a dread symbol in the "hut on chicken legs," which seems so very strange in English that many translators try to use something different, like "a cabin on rooster legs" or "a small hut on hen's legs," etc. It is not without reason that in English editi­ons of Russian fairy tales one can find many strange pictures of the "hut on chicken's legs" that differ greatly from this symbol in the perception of a Russian. Thus, a Russian symbol of the gate­way to the other world becomes enigmatic in English, while it loses its powerfal symbolic function; actually, it is mainly per­ceived as a "gateway to the Russian fairy tale;" In attempts to convert the Russian formula of Baba Yaga's abode into a Europe­an symbol, "the chicken legs" usually disappear and give way to

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Практикум по художественному переводу

just "a strange little hut." The word "strange" plays the role of a symbol in this formula. But then the Russian tale is inevitably replaced by an English fairy story.

One of the most frequent sacral features in folklore is that of ugliness: monsters, dwarves, cripples and hunchbacks, crea­tures with lame legs, crooked nails, hooked noses, etc. Such a creature is not necessarily evil, on the contrary, it may be rather useful and benevolent to people, but in this or that way it belongs to the world of sacral magic or is related to it. Ugliness may fulfil different functions, such as referring to or penetrating into other world, or being evil by nature, or passing through a test of initia­tion to be reborn, etc. In fairy tales, many heroes are transformed into some ugly disguise, such as a frog, a monster, a snake, or a fearsome animal, to be restored to a better and more handsome image in the end. This transfiguration from the ugly into the beau­tiful is one of the most wide spread motifs in many folklore tradi­tions around the world.

Folklore logic and ethic formulas. A mythical or fairy­tale text often includes some particular mnemonic formulas that help to identify the story as belonging wholly or partly to the other world, with its special logic, ethics, morals and reasoring. These are such words and phrases as «грянул он оземь и тут же обернулся серым волком,» in which we can immediately find some contradictory logic, that of a "shape-shifter." A being that changes its shape is admittedly mythical or magic.

Another kind of a mythic logical formula is found in fairy­tale instructions like "you will go there four times four days" or «пойди туда, не знаю куда, принеси то, не знаю что». Such formulas may represent an illogical taboo, or an order, or a spell, and in the source culture they are familiar, easily identified and used in many other contexts to impart some mythical allusion to an ordinary situation. When translated into the target language, such formulas undergo serious or subtle transformations, which influence their mnemonic status. The number of "four" is sacred among the Native Americans, and when such a formula is used, it

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