ON LINGUOPOETIC APPROACH TO THE TRANSLATION OF CONNOTATIVE MEANING IN FICTION

published in Folia Anglistica 2000 “Theory and Practice of Translation”

Marklen E. Konurbayev

Abstract: The article focuses on the linguopoetic significance of connotative elements in literary texts and analyses the ways such elements are translated from one language into another. The author proposes to divide all contextually connotative elements into two classes – those whose semantic potential is broadly realised in the context of a literary work, on the one hand, and those which fulfil mostly expressive function in the text and do not realise their basic nominative meaning to the full, on the other. The author argues that the contextual broadening of the words’ semantics and the actualisation by such lexical elements of their expressive potential does not automatically make them the centre of linguopoetic expression. This highly important for the theory of translation question is considered in close connection with the analysis of such concepts as the aesthetics of literary texts and the semiotic capacity of the connotative elements in a work of fiction.

There’s a line between love and fascination

That’s hard to see on an evening such as this,

For they both give the very same sensation

When you are lost in the magic of a kiss. 

(Ned Washington)

“... Make me immortal with a kiss!” – pleads with the heathen goddess Christopher Marlowe through his hero in Doctor Faustus. Let me pick up the lucky metaphor, apply it to the philological exercise in the transference of meaning from one language to another and argue with the classic that such immortality is not always uncontroversial...

Is there a pleasure in the kiss through a mediator? In our metaphoric sense it depends on the mediator of course. Who knows may be the joy would be even more exquisite – but surely a different sort of joy. What this “kiss” would positively lack and amit is a “connotation” – a very specific emotional-expressive-evaluative “flavour” that makes the author of it unforgettable – the only and the single object of affection that cannot be replaced or substituted. And yet, again metaphorically, a lot of people do try their hand in the business of mediating in the specified sense and even achieve success.

A good translator surely realises that there is always a certain share of vanity in his work – very much the same as in the absurdity of a kiss through a mediator, where a loss of a shade of meaning in the translation of a word or a word-combination not infrequently means the loss of the entire aesthetic effect. But who or what would help the translator find a way to the sacred tabernacle of the aesthetic essence of the original work of fiction blazing the trail for him in a daring quest of “meaning equivalence across cultures”? This is the question I attempt to answer in this article by way of conducting a linguopoetic analysis of some famous texts by the classical Russian and English writers and their translations and try to deduce a particular practical significance out of it for my students of translation at the Department of English Linguistics at the Faculty of Philology, Moscow University.

*

Oddly enough quite a lot of people honestly believe that if the translation preserves 70% of the author’s intention – the translation is good. I wonder what is left (or rather left out) in the remaining 30% and how much “salt” does the translation actually lose with the loss of those “negligible” 30 (or even less) per cents. A hypothetical answer to this question giving a thoughtful theoretician in translation so much food for thought could be found in the works of an outstanding Russian scholar Lev V. Scherba who claimed that the auditory image of a writer can be exceedingly diverse in brightness: certain elements are very clear and distinct for him, and every deviation in their interpretation, however insignificant, would be extremely painful for him. Other elements are as it were in the shade, while there are yet others which he can barely hear, and provided the general perspective of brightness is preserved he would agree to variations in interpretation. Such view would be in keeping with what we observe in the language in general, where we can always discern the important, the significant on the one hand, and the so-called “packing stuff” on the other [cf. 19, 24-25].

If we apply this principle to translation it appears that the transposition of a text from one language to another always presupposes preservation of a certain minimum of conditions – linguistic means and conceptual bases – which are indispensable for its adequate understanding, while every other element which somewhat raises or decreases the expressivity of a translated text, without changing its basic original meaning may be broadly interpreted by the translator[1][1]. This seems very logical and yet there is a certain deficiency in it, for we all know of a specific emotional-expressive “flavour” of a text, which provides a luxury framing for a diamond of the author’s original ideas (especially if the author is of such calibre as Shakespeare or Milton). Change the framing – and the diamond will inevitable have a different sparkle. But in the majority of cases this seems to be the inevitable transformation or (in the worst cases) even the loss of a framing.

It is easier to sacrifice an emotional-expressive framing in the informative styles, where the task of a translator boils down mainly to the transposition of a certain set of concepts that can be directly observed and verified by the readers. However, when it comes to fiction – all reali­ty is there in the words and in their combination. Substitute a word or even a comma – and here comes a miracle! – reality changes as in the looking-glass Wonderworld of Alice. In philology we call this “miracle” – the aesthetics of the text. All efforts at interpreting literary works by linguists and literary critics are invariably directed at establishing the ways this fleeting and ephemeral reality is created. Hence the necessity to establish a certain hierarchy of the linguistic means used by the author in the text – for the play of light and shade on the canvas of a literary work is also a part of a beautiful ephemeral reality and without its consideration the whole picture shall remain absolutely flat. This incessant quest for balance in the intensity of “colours” and the shades of meaning – the expressive and evaluative overtones – and the attempts at comparing all linguistic means used by the author in creating a coherent meta-reality in the target language is called in philology the linguopoetics of translation.

What is the ultimate goal of this analysis? What is the celestial city of aesthetic enjoyment it is driving at? Generally speaking it is the connotation in the broadest sense of the word – all emotional-expressive-evaluative overtones created in the text through a specific choice and arrangement of words. It appears that some words have incredible semantic potential which is variously realised in the context of a work of fiction. Additional semantic-evaluative overtones merge in the mind’s eye of the reader to create a specific meta-reality, the mental contemplation of which leads to the enjoyment of understanding.

In this sense there are two basic types of connotations: the first type is largely responsible for the creation of the meta-reality in the perception of the reader, the second – only enhances the overall aesthetic sensation created by other linguistic means. Roughly speaking this means that the basic nominative meaning of words can be either broadened in the context, acquiring additional shades of meanings and evaluative tints in a specific word surrounding or, contrariwise, – contextually narrowed, i.e. used either terminologically or purely expressively – for the sake of aesthetic decoration or enhancement of the semantic and evaluative scope of other words and phrases or bringing forward a particular concept or an idea. Let me first adduce and briefly consider a couple of the English extracts to illustrate the stated dichotomy and then proceed with a detailed analysis of the approaches to the translation of connotative elements from one language to another.

*

In the beginning of John Milton’s Paradise Lost there is a description of Hell:

Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde,

The seat of desolation, voyd of light,

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames

Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend

From off the tossing of these fiery waves,

There rest, if any rest can harbour there,

And reassembling our afflicted Powers,

Consult how we may henceforth most offend

Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,

How overcome this dire Calamity,

What reinforcement we may gain from Hope,

If not what resolution from despair.

In this extract there are two word-combinations which give a very succinct and emotional description of hell – a sort of quintessence of the whole description – seat of desolation and dire calamity. If we compare these two by the degree expressivity and semantic-emotional potential, it appears that the first one mentioned here is much richer in semantic potential than the second one – semantically it combines the description of the abode of the damned and its principal feature – wildness and desolation. Stylistically this image is strengthened by the figure of amplification with the elements of definition in the beginning of the microcontext (Seest thou yon dreary Plain, forlorn and wilde, / The seat of desolation, voyd of light) and the figure of correction at the end of it (Save what the glimmering of these livid flames / Casts pale and dreadful). The centre of the description is the metaphoric phrase the seat of desolation, which makes a part both of the first and of the second figure. This specific position of the attributive phrase, the obscure characteristics of the denotation and also indirect association with the biblical phrase abomination of desolation make this phrase highly connotative in the first sense that we have mentioned above.

An obvious example of the second type of connotation could be found in the sentence He was sweating from an avowedly insane bicycle trip where the word avowedly does not realise its semantic potential to the full and is used here only to emphasise the intensity of the bicycle ride.

These are my brief illustrations of the two types of connotations that philologists have to deal with in the translation of fiction. The success of the translation would in many respects depend on the correct estimation of the role of a connotative element in the aesthetic entirety of a literary text. Not infrequently such an element would stand in the centre of a poetic image functioning as a kind of a reflective surface modulating through its various contextual shades of meaning, all other words in a piece of writing. Such cases are a great challenge for a translator for it is surely very difficult to find in the target language a word or a combination of words that would have exactly the same semantic implication and expressive-evaluative “aura” as in the source language.

Let us consider a rather successful attempt made along these lines by an acclaimed translator of Alexander S. Pushkin – professor Walter Arndt – in transferring the poem “Echo” by a renowned Russian poet into English:

The centre of a poetic image in this Russian poem is in the last lines where the reverberative nature of a poet’s mind is directly compared to the personified sound-reflective echo. Personification allows Pushkin to introduce at the very end of the poem a sort of a new reflective edge which casts a very specific shade of meaning practically on every word in the poem. Demonstrative pronoun таков as it were generalises the image converging different sides of it into a narrow compass which are then re-applied to the figure of a poet. As a result nearly every word in the beginning of the poem acquires a double implication: one referring to the echo and the other – to the poet.

It appears therefore that the main difficulty in translating this poem lies in the creation of a specific type of polyphony and personification which are contained in the last two lines:

И шлешь ответ;

Тебе ж нет отзыва... Таков

И ты поэт!

The word ответ is probably used here in its most general meaning registered in The Dictionary of the Russian Language compiled by S.I.Ozhegov: “Ответ – реакция, отклик на что-н., действие, выражающее отношение к чему-н”. This meaning is broad enough to be applied to many a phenomena connected with a reaction of human beings to events or actions and is conducive to the polyphonic expression of a poetic image of personified echo.

The word отзыв, according to the same dictionary, means “отклик, отзвук (ответное чувство на что-н)”. While the word отзыв, which is used in the dictionary as the closest synonym of the word отзыв is directly connected with the sound reflection: “отражение звука, эхо”.

Thus, the translator had to be very inventive and careful to preserve the central polyphonic image on which in fact rests the whole poem. The Russian words ответ and отзыв are close synonyms and there is hardly any observable difference between them in this context. However if we compare their basic nominative meanings we shall notice that the word ответ would be more frequently used either in the neutral or the formal style (ответ на письмо, ответ на зявление) and it also presupposes a question to which a certain response is given (ответ на поставленный вопрос), while the the word отзыв in the stated meaning would be used figuratively, built on top of the basic meaning of this word – отражение звука; эхо; звук, доносящийся издалека. This difference is only very delicately realised in the poem – for the word ответ closely the implied call or address of the shepherds:

И крику сельских пастухов –

И шлешь ответ;

Another similar instance is found in the first stanza – but in a much broader meaning than merely a reply to an address:

На всякий звук

Свой отклик в воздухе пустом

Родишь ты вдруг.

In the English translation by Walter Arndt these minor differences between the words отклик, ответ and отзыв were reflected nearly exactly, and, which is probably most important here, the English words were chosen in such a way that their semantic potential would be the broadest and could be amply realised in the contextual polyphony. First, a more general word reply is used, which suits this context to perfection, for according to the OED it simultaneously realises four of its meanings creating the first sonorous polyphonic accord:

1.To respond by some gesture, act, or performance;

2.To return a sound; to echo.

3.To make counter-answer;

4.To return as an answer; to say in reply.

Then comes a finer distinction between ответ and отзыв. We believe it would be very difficult to find anything better than the opposition of a rather formal literary verb to requite and the past participle unrequited, for the difference between them is not in the mere negation of the action expressed by the verb to requite. Being nearly adjectivised in the process of conversion the word unrequited has acquired quite a few semantic features sufficient for the expression of the fine difference between the Russian words ответ and отзыв.

The idea of an answer to a greeting which is implied by the opposition крик vs. ответ:

И крику сельских пастухов –

И шлешь ответ;

is sufficiently expressed by the opposition of the English rather archaic opposition hail vs. requite. The contexts adduced in the OED are a sufficient proof of this fact:

Requite – To salute (one) in return. Obs. rare.

1590 Spenser, They him saluted, standing far afore; Who, well them greeting, humbly did requight.

1591 Lowly they him saluted in meeke wise; But he..scarce vouchsafte them to requite.

The implied here idea of an answer to a question (or rather an echo question to a question) is also expressed in this word – although in a rather formal way. OED:

Requite – To repay with the like;

1548 Udall, Jesus..requited their question with an other.

The idea of action which shows a particular attitude to something, a reaction of some kind expressed by the Russian word ответ is undoubtedly revealed by the English verb to requite as well (although probably in a rather specific way, for it presupposes a very particular type of reaction – it rather means amends, giving back or repayment than a verbal reaction or reverberation which is implied in this poem. OED:

Requite – 1. trans. To repay, make return for, reward (a kindness, service, etc.).

b. To repay, make retaliation or return for, to avenge (a wrong, injury, etc.).

2. To repay, make return to (one) for some service, etc.

This implication is rather unusual in this context: the act of requital always means returning somebody’s good or bad with the same. Thus we know of requiting somebody’s love or wrong or a service of some kind. But it is not a neutral response expressed by the Russian word ответ. However this additional expressive shade is rather weak in the context of the poem and is not supported by any of the words used in the previous lines.

The word unrequited as we have already mentioned is not entirely a negation of the act of requiting in all its meanings, although the opposition is almost exact. The principal implication of the past participle unrequited – is unrewarded, unthanked, unrecognised, unrecompensed[2][2]. This introduces rather strongly a shade of meaning which is only partially (if at all) expressed by the Russian word отзыв in this poem (отзыв о книге, отзыв о фильме). The figurative meaning of the word отзыв here – that of a sound reflection, an echo – is not realised in the translation at all.

In fact the only way for the reader to feel the implication of the figurative echo in this context and to complete in his mind’s eye the polyphonic image of the echo-reflection-response-reward in the last lines of the poem is to pay attention to the logical opposition requite vs. unrequited created by Walter Arndt in the English text as a compensation for the absence of the relevant correlate for the word отзыв. The verb requite being much broader in meaning and richer in connotations than its negative counterpart serves as a kind of a mirror projecting on to the word unrequited part of its emotional-expressive-evaluative shades and as a result the intended polyphony was not broken in spite of the insufficient for this purposes semantic scope of the word unrequited.

All other images used by Pushkin in his poem are directly connected with sound-production and circle around the image of an echo, enhanced by a number of expressive means, such as alliteration, iambic cadence strengthening the sound-imitative ends of lines. Almost all of these expressive means were neatly reproduced in the English variant.

Semantic polyphony is certainly a powerful means of linguopoetic expression. However it would be a mistake to think that it would always play the central role in a work of fiction. Not infrequently its part in a literary text is rather modest and is reduced to an expressive enhancement of the core poetic image or even less than that – to an ephemeral “seasoning” of the text with multiple associations which are not directly relevant for the expression of the principal aesthetic idea. Let us consider some of the examples to see how the translators cope with the task of finding the relevant “expressive framing” for such cases.

Expressive polyphony in the translation

As we have already stated above emotional connotations play the role of a sort of expressive enclosure in a work of fiction giving its principal contextual features additional force and prominence. To translate this “ephemeral emotional-expressive mist” is an arduous task, one of the main dangers of it is a “Scilla and Charybdis alternative” where the translator should avoid giving either too much or too little of what he finds in the original.

There is also another difficulty, which would require of a translator the application of all his creative potential. We mean those cases when the equivalent of the emotional-expressive devices used in the source language simply does not exist in the target language and to preserve the existing expressive background the translator needs either to provide a complex system of semiotic means that would create the required association with the necessary expressive context, on the one hand, (relying, as it were, on the erudition of the reader, hoping that he might have heard something about the uneducated speech of the Russian peasants, or the gypsies or the English soldiers in the docks or plenty of other similar contexts), or, on the other hand, create his own system of expressive means providing the necessary emotional-expressive-evaluative background enhancing the aesthetic centre of the translated work of fiction.

A similar approach should be exercised in reference to the translation of those elements of the text which have the greatest semantic potential and therefore create a peculiar polyphonic milieu around which form invariable other micropictures and traits and features of the imaginable reality created by the author in the context as he plays with shades of meaning and connotations. The point is that such elements have a very definite scope of polyphonic shades which should be very carefully preserved in the translation – not a “spec” can be added or removed from this picture lest it would change its emotional and aesthetic charge. Some words and word combinations can be interpreted more or less precisely because their polyphonic capabilities are relatively limited and one allegoric image used by the author stands exactly for some particular notion or object of reality. At the same time there are other linguistic units in the source text which could be interpreted this way or that way or in so many ways together and the translator is not in a position to break this kaleidoscopic image where so many shades of meaning and emotional tints are expressed simultaneously. And any attempt at precision in such cases would be a violation of the author’s original idea. In such cases the translator needs to estimate the semiotic potential of a translated linguistic unit and express it accordingly in the target language allowing the reader to enjoy “the rainbow effect” of concurrent shades of meanings and not the originality of the translator’s one-way interpretation of the author’s image.

Let us consider some examples from the famous works of fiction to see if this preconceived linguopoetic stance dictating what the translator should or should not do in respect to the author’s intentions is really observed by the translators in their work.

In our fist extract we are going to consider one of the most difficult cases for a translator when a word or a word combination polyphonically realizes several meanings or shades of meanings at a time. In Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet there is an episode when Hamlet learns from the ghost of his father who was his father’s real murderer. Hamlet becomes furious and vindictive and, overwhelmed with emotion, bursts into a soliloquy of extreme emotional tension variously commenting and reinterpreting the ghost’s last phrase:

GHOST ...

Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

Exit

HAMLET

O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?

And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe. Remember thee!

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,

That youth and observation copied there;

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain,

Unmix’d with baser matter: yes, by heaven!

O most pernicious woman!

O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

My tables,--meet it is I set it down,

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;

At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark:

Writing

So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;

It is ‘Adieu, adieu! remember me.’

I have sworn ’t.

MARCELLUS

[Within] My lord, my lord,--

HORATIO

MARCELLUS [Within]

Lord Hamlet,--

HORATIO [Within]

Heaven secure him!

HAMLET

So be it!

One may detect at least five elements in this extract which are as it were polyphonically loaded:

1.    Remember thee (me)!

2.    In this distracted globe.

3.    And thy commandment all alone shall live

4.    Heaven secure him!

5.    So be it!

It does not seem to be very difficult to translate phrases 1,3,4,5. Purely lexically the first, the fourth and the fifth ones can be preserved as they are. The only thing which is required of a translator in this case is a delicate syntactic management of the phrases – for the commandment Remember me! is first addressed by the ghost to Hamlet, then it is reflectively pronounced by Hamlet himself and afterwards menacingly addressed by Hamlet to his uncle whom he distantly observes at the court festivities through a window or an opening in a wall or a roof. The same applies to the phrase Heaven secure him! pronounced by Horatio, and while addressed to Hamlet – in Hamlet’s ears acquires a different sounding – a sort of an echo to his threat, to which he murmurs So be it! which again could either be applied to the phrase Heaven secure him! addressed to Hamlet or to the same phrase addressed to Claudius.

The phrase thy commandment all alone shall live in this context is indirectly suggestive of the similar biblical phrase as in The Book of Proverbs 6:20 of the King James Version:

My son, keep thy father’s commandment

The greatest difficulty presents the translation of the second phrase – in this distracted globe where the word globe could be understood as either the earth, kingdom or the world, on the one hand or Hamlet’s own head, on the other. The descriptive adjective distracted can be equally applied to both. When used with the word globe as the kingdom it means “perplexed or confused by conflicting interests; torn or disordered by dissension or the like” (OED), while when it refers to Hamlet’s own head (or rather his distressed state of mind) it means “much confused or troubled in mind; having, or showing, great mental disturbance or perplexity” (OED). In Hamlet’s mouth this phrase actually realises both these meanings. Let us compare some of the more famous Russian translation of this episode to see if the described polyphony is preserved:

Without going too deeply into the merits and faults of every translation let us briefly concentrate on the polyphonic lines and see if their “multi-layer” semantic structure was preserved.

Out of the four variants of the translation only the last one made by A.Radlova seems to be the most faithful to the original: the Russian word безумный can be applied both to a man and to the world, while the word шар can be metaphorically used to mean the world and to the human head. The original polyphony therefore appears to be preserved in her translation:

None of the translators alluded to the Russian biblical expression “заповедь отца” (Сын мой! Храни заповедь отца...) which can probably be accounted for by the strong religious implication of the Russian word заповедь, while in the English original this allusion is felt but scarcely. The word commandment, although having as strong inherent religious connotation as the Russian word заповедь, was probably used by Shakespeare in this context to increase solemnity in Hamlet’s tone of voice. The English word appears to be less abstract, less generalising than the corresponding Russian word. The latter can be used broadly enough to mean a particular philosophical position or a credo and reproducing it with this implication would mean bringing undesirable shades of meaning into the context. It appears therefore that a very subtle biblical implication that we observe in this context created mainly through the use of the phrase thy commandment could not be adequately reproduced in the Russian translation. But the linguopoetic significance of this implication being as small as it is in this context, the loss of it does not affect considerably the aesthetic qualities of the overall context.

Out of the four translations of this extract – Kronberg’s variant appears to be more successful than the others. Boris Pasternak’s твоим ... веленьем ... всю книгу мозга испишу is odd and outrageous. K.R.’s твое веление ... будет жить в книге мозга моего is better but a highly unconventional Russian word combination книга мозга creating undesirable physiological associations makes the whole phrase equally unacceptable. The Russian word сердце (heart) appears to be more conducive to the expression of the evaluative meaning which is required in this context, since the word brain used by Hamlet actually means memory and a strong desire to take revenge:

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain...

The third connotative element that we mentioned in the beginning is the call Heaven secure him! uttered by Horatio in reply to the mentioning of Hamlet’s name by Marcellus – and Hamlet’s response So be it! which logically and emotionally completes the monologue. In our opinion all the four translators coped with their task successfully enough, for in all of them, as in the original, the two phrases in equal measure apply to Hamlet and to his uncle after Hamlet gave a promise of revenge:

Another interesting case of polyphony is King Claudius’s speech shortly after the death of Hamlet’s father and the marriage between his uncle Claudius and his mother Gertrude the Queen in Act I, Scene II of Shakespear’s Hamlet:

KING CLAUDIUS

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him,

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

The imperial jointress to this warlike state,

Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,--

With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--

Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr’d

Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone

With this affair along. For all, our thanks.

This extract abounds in emotional-expressive means – semantic contrasts, inversive constructions, extended parenthetical insertions, sound repetitions, internal rhymes and polyphony of linguistic means – which all serve one single purpose: to expose the King’s hypocrisy in his attempt to justify his hasty marrying the dowager Queen.

Again, as in the previous extract, our aim is not an exhaustive linguopoetic analysis of this piece but an estimation of how the translators manage (or on the contrary fail) to transpose such an extremely subtle and transitory layer of the literary text’s structure as expressive polyphonic shades.

There were several occasions in this speech when Claudius in a very oblique way hints at his distracted state of mind and his relationship with Hamlet. A case in point is the line in the beginning of the King’s public statement concerning his decision to marry Gertrude the Queen:

Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

The imperial jointress to this warlike state,

According to the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary the word jointress, being formed from the obsolete jointer (a joint possessor; one who holds a jointure) means “a widow who holds a jointure; a dowager” (OED). The morphological structure of both words is rather transparent which allows authors to play with their common root join and therefore use the word in such a way that its broader meaning is realised in the context[3][3]. The word state that is used in the same line in association with the word jointer on the surface means the country, the State of Denmark which at that time was in the state of war with Norway. However in this context it could certainly also mean a particular “condition (of mind or feeling); the mental or emotional condition in which a person finds himself at a particular time” (OED). In this sense the adjective warlike, meaning martial, bellicose, unpacific, contentious could in fact be equally applied to both meanings of the word state.

After marrying Gertrude Claudius was constantly opposed by Hamlet who did not fail to pester his uncle with all sorts of venomous remarks. This certainly troubled the new king a lot, however he could not openly oppose him but secretly cherished the idea of doing away with his nephew and occasionally added to his utterances the implication of being in the state of secret war with Hamlet (see also later in the same speech: “...by our late dear brother’s death our state to be disjoint and out of frame...”). Let us see if this subtle polyphony is expressed in some of the most famous translations of Shakespeare’s tragedy:

It appears that none of the translations adduced here expresses the “lateral” polyphonic implication of the word jointress, neither is the polyphony of the word state realised in the Russian translation. As far as the line our state to be disjoint and out of frame is concerned Boris Pasternak and K.R. in our opinion found the best variant possible conveying the idea of antagonism and discord between Hamlet and Claudius – the Russian words разлад and разъединенье express this idea well enough. Kronberg’s phrase распались связь и сила королевства is probably too abstract to imply this concrete shade of hostility between the members of the family, while Radlova’s расстройство и упадок does not have this implication at all.

Decorative and socio-cultural expressivity

In the preceding parts of this article I have introduced the division of contextual connotations into two big classes which I provisionally described as broad or polyphonic, on the one hand, and narrow or expressive, on the other. In this section I shall consider some examples of the second type of connotations and briefly discuss how these emotional-expressive and decorative elements are rendered from one language into another.

These emotional expressive “clangors” are often used by the translators as a field for applying their creative hand in a more or less uninhibited way, for linguopoetically these elements are subservient to others which form the core of the overall aesthetic image of a literary text. Curiously enough such frivolities could even be found in the Holy Scriptures where tampering with the original Hebrew text was strictly prohibited and condemned. But due to their purely expressive nature these “aesthetic innovations” in the English Bible of 1611 hardly blurred the original meaning and had almost exclusively a decorative force like Psalms 38 and 42 of the King James Bible:

Ps 42:1 As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so

panteth my soul after thee, O God.

The verb to pant in this beautiful comparison realises two of its meanings – direct and figurative: “to gasp (for air, water, etc.); hence fig. To long or wish with breathless eagerness; to gasp with desire; to yearn (for, after, or to with inf.) OED”. If we compare it with another line several Psalms earlier the originality of the word play implicitly contained in Psalm 42 would immediately “spring to our eyes and ears”:

Ps 38:10 My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.

The homophony hart – heart semantically supported by the word soul which collocates with the same verb for all three nouns – to pant – creates a wonderful euphony which makes these two lines unforgettable. It should be admitted however that this linguistic frivolity of the English translators does not in any way affect the original meaning and has a purely expressive power, the sole function of which was to attract the reader’s attention to this particular comparison and thereby make it more memorable.

However no such expressivity is found in the Russian synodal translation of the Bible, where the corresponding Russian words probably had a smaller homophonic potential than their English counterparts:

Псалом 42:1 Как лань желает к потокам воды, так желает душа моя к Тебе, Боже!

Псалом 38:10 Сердце мое трепещет; оставила меня сила моя и свет очей моих, – и того нет у меня.

*

There is a view (and not entirely erroneous one) that statistics does not mean much in the estimation of a literary text’s aesthetic merits. However if a statistic analysis discovers that a certain linguistic unit is used extremely often in a piece of artistic writing and in about 50 or 70% of cases it occurs in one and the same meaning with one and the same implication a researcher has every ground to become suspicious about such unit’s linguopoetic significance, even if the word is registered in the dictionary with all sorts of stylistic markers indicating its “glorious service-record”, such as the word multitude for example which is marked in the dictionary as biblical, or the adverb and the adjective meet with a similar stylistic feature. Such words would fulfil a purely expressive function in the text and transferring them into a different language usually is not a very great difficulty for the experienced translator.

The word multitude occurs more than 80 times in the New Testament and nearly in all those cases it means a great number of people. In the Russian version of the Bible (the synodal translation) this word is almost exclusively rendered through the words народ, множество народа, множество людей. But even in the Old Testament where the word multitude is used in various contexts to imply more broadly numerousness and not just a crowd or a host – in the Russian text it is expressed uniformly through a fairly inexpressive word множество, which however acquired a certain stylistic elevation in such combinations as множество щедрот, множество милости, множество нечестия, etc.

The number of such expressive units in a literary text can be exceedingly great. Taken together they create a unique emotional atmosphere without which a piece of writing would contain nothing but a record of certain facts of doubtful conceptual or aesthetic significance. Inability to find similarly expressive units in the target language in the course of translation may end up with a complete failure to render “the emotional spirit” of the original narration which in many cases appears to be the only “device” turning a trivial enough uneventful story with practically no philosophic generalisations into a masterpiece of literary writing.

Not infrequently such domineering expressivity is achieved through the reproduction of dialectal peculiarities and speech habits of uneducated peasants, soldiers, sailors or some other social groups of a speech community. The whole pleasure and enjoyments from the reading of such texts lies in the comprehension of the implied integrated auditory image incorporating local speech characteristics of different personages of a literary text. The choice of a locally specific vocabulary and syntactic arrangement of lexical units in the sentence is invariably associated with a particular mode of enunciation and articulatory peculiarities and it is usually a great difficulty for a translator to find such lexical correlates in the target language that would create a similar auditory effect.

Let me consider an example – two English translations of Anton Chekhov’s short story “Святою ночью” (On the Sacred Night).

On the Easter Eve some man intends to cross the river by a ferry. While the ferry is taking him to the other side of the river where a festive celebration of Christ’s resurrection in the church has already begun, he is talking to the monk who laments the death of his friend – a talented writer of akaphists. But shortly before this man embarks on a ferry he exchanges a couple of words with a peasant who stands next to him on the river bank:

This dialogue is only lightly marked by the local speech characteristics. Occasional expressive elements in the original Russian text featuring the peasant and his interlocutor are translated mostly by means of compensation. The peasant is trying to be polite to the stranger but his speech is slow and lazy and some of his remarks are logically incomplete and incomprehensible. For the Russian reader such features of speech are purely expressive – they do not carry any other information except the mood and the disposition of a speaker and are in fact very familiar to all of us:

– Ты тоже дожидаешься парома?

– Нет, я так ... зевнул мужик, ...

...

– Я тебе дам пятачок.

– Нет, благодарим покорно ... Ужо на этот пятачок ты за меня там в монастыре свечку поставь ... Этак любопытней будет, а я и тут постою. Скажи на милость, нет парома! Словно в воду канул!

The reply “Нет я так ...” is a sort of a conversational sleech which would usually leave the interlocutor baffled and confused. The translation of Constance Garnett – No, I am not – does not express this implication at all. Her variant sounds as a very categorical statement, which could hardly be followed by a yawn as we observe in this context. Wordsworth Classics’ translation seems to be more successful in this respect – ‘No; I am just waiting.’ yawned the peasant creates nearly the same effect as the Russian utterance does.

Constance Garnett’s variant for the phrase благодарим покорно – I humbly thank you – is contextually inconsistent. The Oxford English Dictionary on CD-Rom gives three examples with this adverbial phrase and all of them imply the expression of gratitude to a socially superior person:

1705 De Foe in Lett. Lit. Men (Camden) 322, I humbly thank your Lordship for the freedom of access you were pleas’d to give my messenger.

1611 Middleton & Dekker Roaring Girl ii. i, I humbly thank your good mistresship.

1585 Hatton in Ld. Campbell Chancellors (1857) II. xlv. 273, I most humbly thank your sacred Majesty for your two late recomfortations.

In the 19^th century the phrase благодарю покорно was just a polite way of expressing gratitude which did not necessarily suggest a social difference of the speakers. In this sense the Wordsworth Classics’ translation – thank you kindly – is certainly better.

Another expressive element in this extract is the Russian archaic dialectism ужо, which according to the Dictionary of Vladimir Dal’ means later – “погодя, позже, после, как будет пора или досуг, не теперь”. Contance Garnet, it seems, omits this element altogether. The only attempt that she makes at somewhat colloquializing the speech of the peasant to make up for the absence of the relevant English archaic element that would be more or less easily comprehended by the modern readers is the use of the wrong agreement between the numeral, the noun and the pronoun: . . . . With that five kopecks put up a candle for me over there in the monastery. . . . Although this expressive shade does not correspond to the original, roughly speaking it could be used here purely “semiotically” to indicate the style difference between the too speakers. Wordsworth Classics translation suggests a different solution: it transfers the essence of this part of conversation in pure English without marking the difference in style: you can keep them and burn a candle for me when you reach the monastery.

I assume the correct translation of this Russian expressive element into English lies somewhere in between the two suggested variants, for neither of them is truly faithful to the original – one of them translates the meaning without expressing inherent stylistic qualities of the lexical element in question, while the other one completely ignores the meaning of it, obviously taking the semantic side of the word ужо as being absolutely linguopoetically irrelevant in this context, and only suggests some other expressive devices for the conversation.

The same concerns the peasant’s remark Этак любопытней будет, а я и тут постою where the word любопытно does not realize its semantics to the full and is used purely expressively, realising several emotional shades at once. What the peasant could actually mean is not at all clear from the context. His usage of the word любопытно could imply simultaneously more unusual, more interesting, more adequate, better, etc. However none of these meanings is expressed clearly and distinctly in this context and the translators were in fact free to choose the variant they preferred – and so they did. The only tiny requirement that should have been observed by the translators of this story is that the English word standing for the Russian любопытнее should be “semantically deficient” and somewhat unusual in this context and bear purely attitudinal connotations – and none of the translator in fact achieves this goal:

That will be more interesting, and I will stand here. (Constance Garnett)

It will be better so, and I will stand here. (Wordsworth Classics)

However a somewhat clumsier variant of Constance Garnett seems to be more suitable for the expression of a stylistic difference between the speakers. The same concerns the last exclamation of impatience Скажи на милость!

On the whole the Wordsworth Classics translation of this episode sounds more refined than the translation of Constance Garnett, but surely less expressive. However the smooth flow of the conversation in Wordsworth Classics in correct and plain English throughout the whole dialogue allows the reader to forget himself in the context much better than in the translation of Constance Garnett. The latter actually makes us feel that this is not a piece of authentic English writing but a translation.

Besides, in my opinion, Wordsworth Classics made a much better preference in this short story ignoring the expressivity of smaller episodes and concentrating on the key situation – the dialogue between the stranger and the monk where the latter was describing humility and supreme spiritual purity of his friend, monk Nicolas who had just died and who had been exceptionally good at writing akaphists.

The emotional and expressive essence of the description is in the combination of words depicting the character of monk Nicolas and occasional quotations of his and other akaphists. And again the Russian text abounds in all sorts of old-fashioned ways of expression interspersed with clerical vocabulary and ministerial syntax. The Russian tradition of ecclesiastic writing and homiletics – particularly at the end of the 19^th century, when most of Anton Chekhov’s short stories were written – was invariably associated with the use of Church-Slavonic – the South Slavic language into which Kyrillos and Methodos translated the Gospels in the ninth century A.D[4][4]. Even at the time of Chekhov the language was extinct as vernacular Old Bulgarian but extant as the official language of the Orthodox Church and the use of it in the monk’s speech evoked a wonderful atmosphere of church service with its specific sumptuousness and resplendence. The monk’s speech flows slowly and melodiously and the reader is mesmerised by the simplicity and lucidity of ideas and solemnity of tone which the orthodox preachers would often use to win the hearts of their parishioners.

This unique expressive feature of the text in question could hardly be adequately revealed in the English language without alluding to the language of the English Bibles of the 16^th-17^th century (Miles Coverdale, William Tyndale and the King James Version). This sort of stylisation was rather successfully used in the translation of Anton Chekhov’s short story. Generally speaking the translators make the right decision: being unable to render individual peculiarities of the monk’s speech they naturally concentrate on creating the expressivity of a different sort: monk Ieronim speaks of the verbal beauty of his friend’s akaphists and the translators, following his description, try to reproduce this specific beauty of expression in the English language as well. At least for the English reader this solution seems to be perfectly justified and certainly much better, than the necessity to force one’s way through the imperfections of the English style in the vain attempt to reveal in general the archaic syntax and vocabulary of the source text. Besides it seems to be perfectly in tune with Anton Chekhov’s own credo of a writer which he very clearly explained in his letter to editor A.N. Pleshcheev on October 4, 1888: “I am afraid of those who will look for tendenciousness between the lines and who are determined to see me either as a liberal or a conservative. I am neither a liberal nor a conservative, neither a gradualist nor a monk nor an indifferentist. I would like to be nothing more than a free artist, and I regret that God did not give me the gift to be one. I hate falseness and coercion in all their forms . . . . Pharisaism, stupidity and arbitrariness reign not merely in merchants’ houses and police stations: I see them in science, in literature, among the young. That is why I have no particular passion for either policemen or butchers or scientists or writers or the young. I consider brand-names and labels a prejudice. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom, freedom from force and falseness in whatever form they express themselves. That’s the platform I’d subscribe to if I were a great artist”.

Here comes an extract from the short story “Святою ночью” followed by the translation of Wordsworth Classics which reads smoothly and easily in spite of occasional imperfections and omissions:

*

By way of conclusion let me briefly repeat the main points of this article again:

1.    Linguopoetic approach to the translation of fiction presupposes first and foremost the establishment of the aesthetic centre of the text i.e. those lexical and syntactic means which form the basis of artistic expression – linguopoetic hinges or pivots providing for the ample realization of other words’ semantic potential in the context of a literary writing.

2.    Connotation – as a specific emotional and expressive shade of the lexical units is the result of the realisation of their semantic potential in the context of a literary writing.

3.    There are basically two types of connotations viz. the broad and the narrow ones. Broad contextual connotation predetermines the appearance of polyphonic shades of meaning i.e. those which one or several lexical units realise in the context of a work of fiction simultaneously. Narrow (or expressive) connotations are on the contrary connected with the functional semantic limitations imposed on the lexical units in the context of a literary work when such units’ sole function boils down to the enhancement of some other words’ semantic potential.

4.    In order to preserve the unique aesthetic atmosphere of a text of verbal art, the expressive and the semantic scope of the words used by the author needs to be carefully rendered i.e. the aesthetic semiotic potential of the lexical units should be neither extended nor reduced.

***

References:

1.      Chekhov, Anton, Selected Stories. – Wordsworth Classics. 1996.

2.      Milton, John, Paradise Lost. – Penguin Books, 1996.

3.      Shakespeare, William, Hamlet // Tragedies. – Everyman’s Library, 1992. – Vol.1.

4.      The Bible Reference Library on CD-Rom. – EEI, 1993.

5.      The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Fourth Edition. – OUP, 1992.

6.      The Oxford English Dectionary on CD-Rom. Version 1.10. – OUP, 1994.

7.      Бархударов Л.С. Язык и перевод. – Москва: “Международные отношения”, 1975.

8.      Библия. Книги Священного Писания. В русском переводе. – Москва: Библейские общества, 1995.

9.      Задорнова В.Я. Восприятие и интерпретация художественного текста. – М.: “Высшая школа”, 1984. – 152 с.

10.    Комиссаров В.Н. Лингвистика перевода. – Москва, 1980.

11.    Комиссаров В.Н. Современное переводоведение. – Москва: “ЭТС”, 1999.

12.    Конурбаев М.Э. Теория и практика тембрального анализа текста. Дисс. ... доктора филол. наук. – Москва, 1999.

13.    Липгарт А.А. Лингвопоэтическое исследование художествен­ного текста: Теория и практика. – Дисс. ... д-ра филолог. наук. – Москва, 1996.

14.    Липгарт А.А. Методы лингвопоэтического исследования. – Москва: Московский лицей, 1997.

15.    Пушкин А.С. Избранная поэзия в английских переводах. – Москва: “Радуга”, 1999.

16.    Рукописное наследие В.Ф. Шишмарева в Архиве Академии наук СССР. Описание и публикации. – М.-Л., 1965.

17.    Чехов, Антон. Полное собрание сочинений и писем в тридцати томах. Том 5. – Москва, 1984.

18.    Шекспир, Уильям. “Гамлет” в русских переводах XIX–XX