Translation legacy of Michael Naydan: American dimension - Статья

UDC 811. 161.2’255.4 TRANSLATION LEGACY OF MICHAEL NAYDAN: AMERICAN DIMENSION V. Byalyk The role of translation can hardly be over-estimated in a multilingual world like ours. Moreover, it’s translation from one language into another that enriches both cultures: the culture of the source language and that of the target one. In studying the language of a society of better to say country, it is not a good idea to focus just on the language and the process of communication. Indeed there are other structures that help us better in understanding a country more than language, though the role of language isn’t diminished here in any way. Generally, language is an expression of culture and individuality of its speakers. It influences the way the speakers perceive the world. So, focusing on the issue of translation from one language to another, the culture of both languages in the process of translation is influential. Of course, one should consider that to what extent the culture is in the text and to what extent the language is in culture. In other words, we may speak about sociocultural and semiotic aspects of translation, once a language is considered a semiotic system. As a matter of fact, a good translator should be familiar with the culture, customs, and social settings of the source and target language speakers. He/she should also be familiar with different styles of speaking, and social norms of both languages. This awareness, can improve the quality of the translations to a great extent. According to Hatim and Mason [1] the social context in translating a text is probably a more important variable than its genre. Many outstanding translators are acutely aware of these facts and become well-known in the world due to their proficiency and skills to render all the social and cultural subtleties of the source language text into its target counterpart, thus making cultures closer and, no doubt, bringing nations to mutual understanding. Such a translation activity is of extreme importance for Ukraine to be known, understood and cooperated with on the global scale. The creative work and translation activity of the people involved in it deserve the most thorough consideration. It is also even of more importance due to the fact that talented translators of fiction, as a rule, do their job not for money (as it isn’t paid much, unfortunately) but out of love for their profession and people. The aim of this article is to outline briefly a sociocultural semiotic approach to translation process of a well-known American scholar and translator, Dr. Michael M. Naydan, a Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, The Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA. Among the objectives set in the article, we can emphasize the following as the major ones: to give a short biographical background of the translator; to outline his professional activity as a scholar and a translator which will include the translation of works of fiction basically from Russian into English and Ukrainian into English periods; to focus on sociocultural aspects of the translator’s method of two languages as heterogeneous semiotic systems. Discussion and the results of the research. Dr. Michael M. Naydan is a prolific literary translator of contemporary poetry and prose from Ukrainian and Russian and an outstanding academician. He has published over 30 books of translations and more than 100 articles and translations in literary journals in the USA and Europe, including Ukraine. The versatile personality of Dr. Michael Naydan is proved by his public and creative activity both in the USA and Ukraine, his active participation in all spheres of life of the Ukrainian Diaspora in North America, his mastery of rending his love for word, his readiness and eagerness to share his knowledge and help with others, no matter if they are simply students, Fulbright grantees (and he has them about 40) or famous writers, poets, academicians, public figures. His distinctive feature to be human and humane attracts most of all, both very young and mature people who are lucky to communicate with him. He is equally accepted with respect either at the academic venues (a scholarly conference in San Francisco in 2017, ASEEES Convention in Washington, DC in 2016), or in a classroom at the Burrowes Building of the University. He also writes poetry, songs, prose, besides scholarly articles, and paints a little. Michael Naydan was born in 1952 in New Jersey, USA, to an immigrant family from Ukraine. However, the environment he was brought up was far from being Ukrainian. It took the family, as he stated in one of his interviews [2; 3], 45 minutes to get to the nearest Ukrainian church and Saturday or Sunday Ukrainian school was out of the question. His Ukrainian speaking family was the only source of his tie with the Ukrainian roots. But the love for the native word has be