Literary and poetic methods of translation - Курс лекций

Literal translation is 6 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. 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. 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 language elements. However, we should differentiate between the ideas and principles of literary and poetic methods of translation. Translation is a complex dichotomous and cumulative process which involves a number of activities drawing upon other disciplines related to language and culture. Translation is a complicated phenomenon that deals with linguistic forms, linguistic and cultural pictures of the world and the communicative situation itself (Breus). Translation is a process of interlingual communication of ideas (Barchudarov). Translation is a kind of interlingual communication. A translator shall create a text the meaning, structure and functions of which shall be equal to those of the original text (Komissarov). Translation is a kind of transformation of a SL text into a TL text (Kazakova). Minimal unit of the source text which can be translated as a whole is a unit of thought that expresses one grammatical function. It’s called functional unit of translation the units that have one lexical meaning (to take place), dialectical, which expresses unit of proseadeary (it’s singled of intonation pattern) If we characterize the process of translation we can do it like this. SL text- analysis-transfer-restructuring- TL text In the begging we have the speaker of the source language that creates a source language text. And at the end we have a target language text. So we can take into consideration that these people those who speak the Sl don’t know the TL. So we have the translator or the interpreter and he reads or listens to the Sl and analysis it. Analysis - to divide the text into meaningful parts. The translator divides the text into meaningful parts, he finds out how these meaningful parts can be expressed. He looks for equivalents in the TL and tries to translate every meaningful part. If he can’t find equivalents he finds adequate structures that can compensate for the absence of equivalents. Then he finds that he can’t assemble the text according to the pattern that he’s given in the Sl text, because the parts that he translated came to look different. And he was to explain some things because there are cultural peculiarities, language peculiarities. And to make the text he has to restructure the text and then he assembles a new text- the TLT. And the TLT is transferred for recipient. This is the process and this is the result. Formulated in basic terms, the intercultural task of poetic translation may be expressed as follows: to translate a literary work from a language to another language means to lose as little as possible of its original cultural authenticity while preserving as much as possible of its intercultural value. In the other words, the aim is to reconstruct the imagery of the source text as a system into the target culture by means of the target language and literary traditions. New readers should make efforts to appreciate a foreign system of imagery but the difficulty must not dominate the translated text lest it should become dull and alien to the target culture - so that the text in the target language should make sense and bring aesthetic and emotional pleasure to the target reader. Such terms as pleasure and dull involve the idea of the emotional component in poetic translation while the notion of sense appeals to the rational assessment. Normally, these two major aspects of the poetic translation process co-operate, and the modus vivendi is based on their natural relationship. Presumably, translation techniques used to deal with literary works necessarily 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) transla