38.Translation of prose fiction.

Prose fiction is not true to fact. Literature deals with generalized experience. Prose fiction is written to be read rather than to be performed. The events can run into different forms (satirical, gothic etc.). It’s possible to generalize some features of prose fiction as such.

1.Narrative technique. It’s all information, relating to the manipulation of the point of view in the work. It’s the choice of events & facts, the location of events & facts in time & space, the choice of order (chronological or logical).

2.Characterization. It’s information about characters, any indication that characters are changing or developing, significant new information about the characters. The character may be described by the author, by other characters, by his own actions & language. The character may be static.

3.Theme. It’s the moral problems, issues, raised for the character or for the reader or for both.

4.Plot. It’s an ordered, organized sequence of events & actions.

5.Style. As for prose fiction there are 2 types of style. Authorial style is related to the meaning in a general way. Talking about style, people usually mean Authorial style, in other words a way of writing that recognizably belongs to a particular writer. When we examine text style we need to examine linguistic choices, which are intrinsically connected with the meaning & the effect upon the reader. Areas like lexical & grammatical patterning, discourse coherence & cohesion, & figures of speech should be explored in details. Sometimes even a seemingly insignificant commonality can become important in interpretative terms.

Translation from one tongue to another is altogether too complicated & mysterious, & still it’s possible to distinguish the nature of fiction translation from the others. The translation of fiction deals not only with bilingual but also bicultural transference including the entire complex of emotions, associations, ideas, which intrinsically relate different nations’ languages to their lifestyles & traditions.

39.Rendering English meters in translation.

Metre (meter) describes the linguistic sound patterns of a verse. Scansion (cкандирование стиха) is the analysis of poetry's metrical and rhythmic patterns. Prosody is sometimes used to describe poetic meter. Meter is part of many formal verse forms.The units of poetic meter vary from language to language. They can involve arrangements of syllables into repeated patterns called feet(стопа) within a line. English meter is traditionally conceived as being founded on the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. Meters in English verse are named by the characteristic foot and the number of feet per line. Eg: blank verse is unrhymed "iambic pentameter," a meter composed of 5 feet per line in which the kind of feet called iambs predominate. Old English poetry has a different metrical system from modern English. In Old English poetry, each line must contain four fully stressed syllables, which often alliterate. The unstressed syllables are less important. The most common characteristic feet of English verse are the iamb in two syllables and the anapest in three. The most frequently encountered is the iambic pentameter (metrical norm is five iambic feet per line, though metrical substitution is common and rhythmic variations practically inexhaustible). = John Milton's Paradise Lost, most sonnets. Lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter are commonly known as blank verse, which in English is most famously represented in the plays of William Shakespeare. Another important meter in English is the ballad meter, also called the "common meter", which is a 4 line stanza, with two pairs of a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic trimeter; the rhymes usually fall on the lines of trimeter, although in many instances the tetrameter also rhymes.

Amazing Grace! how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me;

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.

(Poetic organization of content: syllabic, syllabo-tonic, free verse, rhyme, blank verse. The patterns are always recurrent, repetative.) In the syllabic verse we rely on ‘foot’. There are 6 patterns: Dissylables (iambus- e.g.return; `trochee- e.g.respite; `spondee- e.g.sunbeam) & Trisyllables (dactyl- e.g.merrily; `amphibrach- e.g. receiving; a`napest- e.g.colonnade).

As to free verse, rhythm does not follow a set pattern from phrase to phrase, from line to line. Poets rely for the most part on the repetition of syntactic structures, long lines that could have some inner rhyme to keep the melody; or on the alternations of short & long lines. Inspite of the implications in the regular metrical patterns a good reader makes a compromise btw the strict pattern of the metre & the natural phrasing & natural stress of the lines: ‘To Be or Not to Be. That Is the Question’. In Am & British poetry we can observe a variety of patterns – this gives the poetry its melody (regular pauses at the end of every line are dull). Some poems contain a more or less regular pause in the middle of the line (caesura = literally, a cut or cutting), played a particularly important role in Old English poetry). Some lines are of different length. This is determined by the number of feet & units of the metrical pattern, the short line consisting of a single foot – monometre.

Sometimes the foot is spondaic & more often iambic:

Thus I

Pass by

And die.

The metre of the line is usually described as iambic pentameter or iambic tetrameter( usually in ballads), etc.: dimeter (2 feet – двухстопный размер), trimeter(3), tetrameter(4), pentameter(5),.hexameter (6), .. Translator should know the metres, it’s necessary to see the variation of metres that the poet uses to make the line sound not monotonous. When you translate from E. into R. it’s difficult to observe the pattern, ‘cos R. words are much longer. At least do not distort the melody too much.