A famous linguist Juliane House regarded translation as the replacement of an original text with another text. Translations mediate between languages, societies and literature. It is through translation that cultural and linguistic barriers are overcome. It is evident that translation is a secondhand communication as it provides access to something that already exists. Translation is not only the linguistic act, but also the cultural act, as language and culture can not be separated. Any language reflects and shapes the reality of culture, in which it exists. Considering from the point of view of intercultural communication, translation is a very complicated process, as a translator has to link the original text, that exists in its cultural reality, to target communicative conditions and target cultural reality. (Tchaikovsky R.R.; Juliane House)
Translation is creative work that involves understanding of the original text, formulation of mental representation of the meaning, and rendering the text in another language. Any translation is the creation of a new text. Translation of fiction is one of the most difficult types of translation. That can be explained by the tasks translators have to face. Features of fiction translation are conditioned by the specificity of texts of such a kind. Reproduction of the author’s style, rendering the pragmatic impact on the readers, preservation of the aesthetic effect of the original text – are the major problems of translation of fiction.
Translation replaces the original text for people, who do not know the source language. For majority of people original texts exist only through their translated versions. That is the source of other problems, that translators face. Translation should render the author’s idea, the fiction reality, created by the author. It is difficult for any person to stay neutral, but translators are to render the text exactly as it was written, without adding their own remarks, opinions or attitude. Translated texts and original versions should evoke the same feelings and emotions in their readers. Translation of fiction should also make aesthetic effect on its readers.
As translation theory developed, two translation strategies were singled out – foreignization and domestication. Domestication is the strategy that implies the minimization of the ‘foreign’ component of the text. A text acquires the cultural traits of the target language. Texts, translated by domestication, do not look like translated texts, but like original ones, created by means of the target language. Cultural differences are obliterated.
Foreignization is an absolutely different approach that is based on the idea that foreign cultural values should not be minimized. Cultural norms of the source language should be conveyed in translation. Foreignization, though being the preferable strategy of translation, should not be the only way of translating texts. Sometimes applying of domestication is necessary, as any translator should take the abilities of the translation recipients into consideration. Foreignization should not be overused, translations that contain too much foreign components are the reflections of cultural stereotypes and prejudices, this also leads to domestication of translated texts.
The difficulties in the perception of a translated text are caused mainly by the fact that the known language means turn out to be insufficient for the adequate understanding of another linguistic world-image. The same notions in different languages have various expressions with dissimilar semantics. Some notions do not have any reflection in another language. Lexical systems of languages possess the most considerable differences, such as the peculiarities of denotation, semantics, and cultural realia. Realia are the words that denote special features of culture, everyday life, folklore and historical epochs of cultures, within they exist. Belonging to only one culture, they do not have any equivalents in the other.
Nevertheless, the main difficulty is not the translation of words, but rendering depth of the original text content. Each text of fiction has a certain reticence, implicit meaning, the rendering of which is a challenge for a translator. These are the questions studied by pragmatics.
Evidently, the translation and the original text are not identical. Translation is the rendering of the original, that’s a version of the text, interpreted by a translator. Each new translation is a separate version of the translation. The most provocative formulation is that the translation actually creates the original text. This statement, though being arguable, is quite reasonable. First of all because there’s no reality, that does not go through the perception of a person. Each interpreter has his own idea of the original text.
The discrepancies of the original and the translation are considered in the theories of translatability and untranslatability respectively. The theory of untranslatability is based on Leibniz’s idea that a language is a means of a thought. The extreme realization of the theory is the principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its respective speakers conceptualize their world, their world view, or otherwise influences their cognitive processes.
Opposite views can be observed in the theory of complete translatability. The theory is based o the principle that reality is one for everyone. It assumes that any object or phenomena of reality can be expressed in any language.
At present times both theories are being criticized. Scientists adhere to the concept of partial translatability. They divide translatability into cultural and linguistic. Linguistic untranslatability is the impossibility of finding word-equivalents due to different linguistic systems. Cultural intranslatabilty is the absence of certain cultural notions and realia. Cultural intranslatabilty is extralinguistic intranslatabilty. Cultural intranslatability is one of the issues of translation of fiction. Fiction is characterized by frequent usage of words, denoting objects and phenomena of everyday culture. Fiction expresses all the peculiarities of the nation. Fiction is a “mirror, in which lives of people that speak one language and are a one nation are reflected”.
Adequacy of translation is the most important requirement to translated texts. Equivalence is one of the central issues in translation study. Its definition, relevance, and applicability within the field of translation theory have caused heated controversy. Various definitions of equivalence are suggested, as equivalence is viewed from different approaches.
Some theorists argue that translators deal with 2 different cultures at the same time. From this point of view, translation is considered as a transfer of the message from the source language to the target language. This approach seems to be the most reasonable, as it implies also a pragmatic, semantic and functionally oriented equivalence of translated text and the original.
Equivalent translation can be called adequate translation if we add to ‘equivalence’ evaluative meaning.
The theories of possibilities to achieve equivalence in translation vary. According to linguistic relativity hypothesis, the only equivalence that can be achieved is of a general functional kind. Such approach is similar to basic ideas of the theory of untranslatability. “Appropriate meanings in the target language can neither be accessed nor reproduced by the translator, because words across languages never exactly correspond as lexical items because they encode different semantic features and enter into different sense relations with other words.” (Juliane House, p.39) To support this idea, translation theorists also consider the differences of grammar. They say that grammatical forms inevitably change in translation, the meaning, that is expressed in definite grammatical forms of the original text is also lost.
A translated text can never be fully identical to the original, due to various reasons. It can only be more or less equivalent to it. Within translation of fiction, equivalence deals not only with rendering plot and information, but also with rendering the emotive component, pragmatic effects.
References
- Juliane House, Translation, Oxford University Press
- Комиссаров, В. Н., Теория перевода: лингвистические аспекты, М.: Высшая школа, 1990
- Казакова, Т.А. Художественный перевод, Инъязиздат, 2006
- Ковалева, К.И. Оригинал и перевод: Два лица одного текста, М.: ВЦП, 2001.
- Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference, 1998
- Влахов С., Флорин С. , Непереводимое в переводе, М.: Международные отношения, 1980
- URL: http://www.rustranslater.net, Проблематика художественного перевода
- Чайковский, Р.Р, Вороневская, Н. В., Художественный перевод как вид межкультурной коммуникации, М: Флинта, Наука, 2014
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