They had reached the mysterious mill where the red tape was spun, and Yates was determined to cut through it here and now. (St. Heym. "Crusaders")
"Red tape" is usually translated as , , but bureaucratism cannot be spun or cut through. The translator had to invent an occasional substitute:
, .
A similar tactics is resorted to by the translator when he comes across a pun in ST. If the SL word played upon in ST has a Russian substitute which can also be used both literally and figuratively, a word-for-word translation is possible:
Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor BUmber, he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze.
- , , .
In other cases the translator tries to find in TL another word that can be played upon in a similar way:
He says he'll teach you to take his boards and make a raft of them; but seeing that you know how to do this pretty well already, the offer... seems a superfluous one on his part.
Here the word "teach" is intended by the owner of the boards to mean "to punish" but the man on the raft prefers to understand it in the direct sense. The Russian equivalent does not mean "to punish" and the translator finds another word which has the two required meanings:
, , -116
, , , .
A very popular stylistic device is to include in the text an overt or covert quotation. Unlike references in scientific papers the stylistic effect is usually achieved not by citing a complete extract from some other source, giving the exact chapter and verse and taking great care to avoid even the slightest change in the original wording. In literary or publicist texts quotations often take the form of allusions with a premium put on a general impression. It is presumed that the cited words are well known to the reader and can readily suggest the sought-for associations.
Translation of such allusions is no easy matter. The translator has to identify the source and the associations it evokes with the SL receptors and then to decide whether the source is also known to the TL receptors and can produce the similar effect. He may find the allusion untranslatable even if the source is sufficiently popular. For instance L. Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" was many times translated into Russian and is much enjoyed both by children and adults in this country. However, the translator will hardly preserve the obvious allusion to the book in the following sentence:
The Tories were accused in the House of Commons yesterday of "living in an Alice in Wonderland world" on the question of nuclear arms for Germany.
|
|
|
, .
As a rule, previous translations of the source of the allusion are widely used to render it into Russian. This can be exemplified by S. Marshak's translation of the popular English nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty which is often cited in Britain and USA. In the translation Humpty Dumpty who "sat on the wall and had a great fall" was called - and "all the king's men" who "cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again" became . And ever since all allusions to the rhyme have been translated on the basis of Marshak's version. So, when C. Bernstein and B. Woodward called their famous Watergate story "All the President's Men", it was unquestionably rendered into Russian as .
Some stylistic devices may be ignored by the translator when their expressive effect is insignificant and their reproduction in the target text would run counter to the spirit of TL. One of the oldest and most commonly used stylistic devices in English is alliteration. Many headings, strings of epithets and other phrases in English texts consist of words which begin with the same letter. An Englishman seems to be very happy if he can
call an artificial satellite "a man-made moon" or invent a headline like "Bar Barbarism in Bars". As a rule, the formal device cannot be reproduced in the Russian translation where it would look rather bizarre and often distort the meaning of the phrase. There are, however, infrequent exceptions when the repetition of the initial letters assumes a particular communicative value. A much cited example is from Ch. Dickens "Little Dorrit":
' is a preferable mode of address," observed Mrs. General. "Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips, especially prunes and prism."
Obviously the Russian equivalents to the "good" words should all begin with the letter n even if they referred to quite different objects, e.g.: , , , , , etc.
Still more infrequent is the reproduction in translation, of another common English stylistic device, the so-called zeugma, when a word enters in several collocations within one sentence each time in a different sense, e.g.:
(The man)... took a final photograph of Michael in front of the hut, two cups of tea at the Manor, and his departure.
In Russian such usage is outside the literary norm (cf. : - , - , - ).
A stylistic effect can be achieved by various types of repetitions, i.e. recurrence of the word, word combination, phrase for two times or more. A particular type of repetition is the reiteration of several successive sentences (or clauses) which usually includes some type of lexical repetition too, e.g.:
England is a paradise for the well-to-do, a purgatory for the able, and a hell for the poor.
, .
Repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. It adds rhythm and balance to the utterance. In most cases the translator takes pains to reproduce it in TT. Repetition, however, is more often used in English than in Russian and the translator may opt for only a partial reproduction of the English long series of identical language units.
|
|
|
Exercises
I. Suggest the possible ways of translating the metaphors in the following sentences.
1. The tool business is one of the most competitive industries in 118
America - dog eat dog down to the puppies. 2. The Tory card-castle of illusions of the British Empire's glorious future lay in ruins. 3. The owners of the coal mines knew which side their bread was buttered on. 4.1 always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was for my children to lie upon. 5. No amount of eating your cake and wanting to have it could take the place of common honesty. 6. Jolyon stood a moment without speaking. Between this devil and this deep sea - the pain of a dreadful disclosure and the grief of losing his wife for two months - he secretly hoped for the devil, yet if she wished for the deep sea he must put up with it. 7. The racists in South Africa began to feel the waves of Africa liberation lapping round their ankles. 8. Father Brown seemed to take it quite naturally and even casually, that he should be called in to consider the queer conduct of one of his flock, whether she was to be regarded as a black sheep or as a lost lamb. 9. Mel, airport general manager lean, rangy and a powerhouse of disciplined energy was standing by the Snow Control Desk, high in the control power.
II. Translate the following similes into Russian.
1. There was a mile of clear road ahead, straight as a die. 2.1 came into her room half an hour before the bridal dinner, and found her lying on her bed as lovely as the June night in her flowered dress and as drunk as a monkey. 3. It had begun to rain. Umbrellas sprouted like mushrooms to right and left. 4. Here and there, among the more familiar things, plants of cactus stood up like the listening ears of strange animals. 5. All day since reading that letter there'd been a queer taste in my mouth, like copper, like blood. 6. He makes most people with so-called principles look like empty tin cans. 7. Luckily the night was mild. He won't have caught pneumonia. Besides, he's as strong as an ox. 8. The sanitation won't bear looking at. In a dry summer the kids die like flies with infantile cholera. 9. All were packed, despite the elongation of the vehicle, like herrings in a tin. 10. Mary would be all right now, right as rain.
III. Explain the translator's tactics to be used to render the puns in the following sentences
into Russian.
1. Even the Conservatives were refusing to call themselves Conservatives again, as if there was something ridiculous about the word, and they knew there was really nothing to conserve. 2. There's a lot of feet in Shakespeare's verse but there are not any legs worth mentioning in Shakespeare's plays. 3. But their united sagacity could make nothing of it, and they went to bed - metaphorically - in the dark. 4. If our cannon balls were all as hot as your head, and we had enough of them, we should
conquer the earth, no doubt. 5. He said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page. "Go long," I said, "you ain't more than a paragraph." 6. Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with him and were of his mind - if you might call it mind. 7. When he had done that, he corked the bottle tight, with the air of a man who had effectually corked the subject also and went to sleep for three stages. 8. Then the hostler was told to give the horse his head; and his head being given him, he made a very unpleasant use of it: tossing it into the air with great disdain and running into the parlour window over the way.
IV. Analyse the following sentences. Point out the source of the allusions and suggest their Russian translations.
|
|
|
1. Freedom of speech, like many other equalities, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. 2. Obviously something was rotten in the State of Alabama - something putrid and stinking. 3. The watchword of the graft-busting drive was "Beware of Agents Bearing Gifts". 4. The conservationists try to get the industry to realize that grime does not pay. 5. A Federal judge said at the time that the decision had made a shambles of the Smith Act. But Humpty Dumpty has been put together again by the new Administration. 6. His hair couldn't have been more violently on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack built. 7. As a true artist the writer held up his mirror to catch the flashes of light and shadow that make up the struggle of the working class. 8. Each member of the union must be prepared to offer his widow's mite to help the starving children of the strikers.
V. Analyse various types of repetitions in the following sentences and suggest the ways of rendering them into Russian.
1. The Union ranks grow in struggle and it is in struggle that we recruit our leadership and the ranks of the best men and women of the working class. 2. Come war, come deluge, come anything and everything except the popular uprising against the scarcity-dividend system, the international machine of profit-making must pound on. 3. The wretched slaves had no knowledge, no rights, no protection against the caprices of their irresponsible masters. 4. Examination convinced him that the deacon was dead - had been dead for some time, for the limbs were rigid. 5. She did more that day than any other. For, in the morning she invariably cleared off her correspondence; after lunch she cleared off the novel or book on social questions she was reading; went to a concert clearing off a call on the way back; and on first Sundays stayed at home to clear off the friends who came to visit her.
