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Файл:Basic literary translation. Учебное пособие-1
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Из романа «Время, вперед!» В. Катаева
121
3.3 Traits of literature school
I tell you, said Manfred
imperiously, Hippolita is no longer my
wife; I divorce her from this hour. Too long
has she cursed me by her unfruitfulness. My
To recreate traits of literature school a translator should follow some steps:
read critical works about the author and the text under translation, as well
as about the literature school which the text belongs to;
read other work of the same school to see the traits;
read other works by the author to define traits of the school peculiar to the
given text;
find out what traits of the same school are peculiar to belles-lettres in the
target language;
recreate the traits of literature school in translation using means of the
target language and target culture and literature.
If there is no such literature school in the target culture a translator should be
very careful in recreating the traits showing the difference between the text and
other work in the target culture.
Exercises
1. Study the characteristic traits of the gothic style in English literature. What is
their reflection in the language of literary works?
2. Find in the given English text traits of the gothic style. Compare the English text
with its translation. Explain what means the translator uses to recreate the traits of the
style.
122
fate depends on having sons, and this night I
trust will give a new date to my hopes.
At those words he seized the cold
hand of Isabella, who was half dead with
fright and horror. She shrieked, and started
from him, Manfred rose to pursue her, when
the moon, which was now up, and gleamed
in at the opposite casement, presented to his
sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which
rose to the height of the windows, waving
backwards and forwards in a tempestuous
manner, and accompanied with a hollow
and rustling sound. Isabella, who gathered
courage from her situation, and who
dreaded nothing so much as Manfreds
pursuit of his declaration, cried
Look, my Lord! see, Heaven itself
declares against your impious intentions!
Heaven nor Hell shall impede my
designs, said Manfred, advancing again to
seize the Princess.
At that instant the portrait of his
grandfather, which hung over the bench
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where they had been sitting, uttered a deep
sigh, and heaved its breast. Isabella, whose
back was turned to the picture, saw not the
motion, nor knew whence the sound came,
but started, and said
Hark, my Lord! What sound was
that? and at the same time made towards
the door.
Manfred, distracted between the flight
of Isabella, who had now reached the stairs,
and yet unable to keep his eyes from the
picture, which began to move, had,
however, advanced some steps after her,
still looking backwards on the portrait,
when he saw it quit its panel, and descend
on the floor with a grave and melancholy
air.
Do I dream? cried Manfred,
returning; or are the devils themselves in
league against me? Speak, internal spectre!
Or, if thou art my grandsire, why dost thou
too conspire against thy wretched
descendant, who too dearly pays for Ere
he could finish the sentence, the vision
sighed again, and made a sign to Manfred to
follow him.
Lead on! cried Manfred; I will
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follow thee to the gulf of perdition.
The spectre marched sedately, but
dejected, to the end of the gallery, and
turned into a chamber on the right hand.
Manfred accompanied him at a little
distance, full of anxiety and horror, but
resolved. As he would have entered the
chamber, the door was clapped to with
violence by an invisible hand. The Prince,
collecting courage from this delay, would
have forcibly burst open the door with his
foot, but found that it resisted his utmost
efforts.
3. Translate the following text.
Isabella and her women tore Hippolita from the corse; but Theodore threatened
destruction to all who attempted to remove him from it. He printed a thousand kisses on
her clay-cold hands, and uttered every expression that despairing love could dictate.
Isabella, in the meantime, was accompanying the afflicted Hippolita to her
apartment; but, in the middle of the court, they were met by Manfred, who, distracted with
his own thoughts, and anxious once more to behold his daughter, was advancing to the
chamber where she lay. As the moon was now at its height, he read in the countenances of
this unhappy company the event he dreaded.
From “The Castle of Otranto”, by H. Walpole
Перевод В.Е. Шора
shook the castle to its foundations; the earth rocked, and the clank of more than mortal
What! is she dead? cried he in wild confusion. A clap of thunder at that instant
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armour was heard behind. Frederic and Jerome thought the last day was at hand. The
latter, forcing Theodore along with them, rushed into the court. The moment Theodore
appeared, the walls of the castle behind Manfred were thrown down with a mighty force,
and the form of Alfonso, dilated to an immense magnitude, appeared in the centre of the
ruins.
Behold in Theodore the true heir of Alfonso! said the vision: And having
pronounced those words, accompanied by a clap of thunder, it ascended solemnly towards
heaven, where the clouds parting asunder, the form of St. Nicholas was seen, and receiving
Alfonsos shade, they were soon wrapt from mortal eyes in a blaze of glory.
The beholders fell prostrate on their faces, acknowledging the divine will. The first
that broke silence was Hippolita.
My Lord, said she to the desponding Manfred, behold the vanity of human
greatness! Conrad is gone! Matilda is no more! In Theodore we view the true Prince of
Otranto. By what miracle he is so I know not suffice it to us, our doom is pronounced!
shall we not, can we but dedicate the few deplorable hours we have to live, in deprecating
the further wrath of heaven? heaven ejects us whither can we fly, but to yon holy cells
that yet offer us a retreat.
Thou guiltless but unhappy woman! unhappy by my crimes! replied Manfred,
my heart at last is open to thy devout admonitions. Oh! could but it cannot be ye are
lost in wonder let me at last do justice on myself! To heap shame on my own head is all
the satisfaction I have left to offer to offended heaven. My story has drawn down these
judgments: Let my confession atone but, ah! what can atone for usurpation and a
murdered child? a child murdered in a consecrated place? List, sirs, and may this bloody
record be a warning to future tyrants!
From “The Castle of Otranto”, by H. Walpole
4. Study the characteristic traits of postmodernism in English literature. What is
their reflection in the language of literary works?
126
5. Find in the given extracts traits of postmodernism. Translate the extracts.
Extract 1
My father had died at the same age. I had always imagined that his would be the
harder death, because I had loved him the more, whereas at best I could only be irritated
fond of my mother. But it worked the other way round: what I had expected to be the
lesser death proved more complicated, more hazardous. His death was just his death; her
death was their death. And the subsequent house-clearing turned into an exhumation of
what we had been as a family not that we really were one after the first thirteen or
fourteen years of my life. Now, for the first time, I went through my mothers hadbag.
Apart from the usual stuff, it contained a cutting from the Guardian listing the twenty-five
greatest post-war English batsmen (though she never read the Guardian); and a photo of
our childhood dog Max, a golden retriever. This was inscribed on the back in an
unfamiliar hand Maxim: le chie, and must have been taken, or at least annotated, in the
early 1955 by P., one of my fathers French assistants.
Extract 2
My brother distrusts the essential truth of memoirs; I distrust the way we colour
them in. We each have our own cheap mail-order paintbox, and our favourite hues. Thus, I
remembered Grandma a few p unopinionated. My brother, when
consulted, takes out his paintbrush and counterproposes . His mental
album also contains more snaps than mine of a rare three-generational family outing to
Lundy Island in the early 1950s. For Grandma it was almost certainly the only time she
left the British landmass; for Grandpa, his first since returning from France in 1917. The
sea was choppy that day, Grandma wretchedly sick, and when we reached Lundy we were
told it was too rough for us to disembark. My memories of all this are faded sepia, my
brothers still lurid. He describes how Grandma spent the whole trip below deck, vomiting
into a succession of plastic beakers, while Grandpa, flat cap pulled down over his
eyebrows, doggedly received each filled receptacle. Instead of disposing of them, he lined
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all the beakers up on a shelf, as if to embarrass her. This is, I think, my brothers favourite
childhood memory.
Extract 3
So if, as we approach death and look back on our lives and
I suspect we are doing little more than
confabulating: processing strange, incomprehensible, contradictory input into some kind,
any kind, of belivable story but believable mainly to ourselves. I do not object to this
atavistic need for narrative not least since it is how I make my living but I am
suspicious of it. I would expect a dying person to be an unreliable narrator, because what
is useful to us generally conflicts with what is true, and what is useful at that time is a
sense of having lived to some purpose, and according to some compre
A man writes a book about death. Between the time he thinks of his opening line
Lets get this death thing straight and the time he types his actual and different opening
line, approximately 750,000,000 people in the world will have died. During his writing of
the book, a further 75,000,000 or so die. Between his delivering the book to publishers and
its appearance, a further 45,000,000 die. When you look at those figures, Edmond de
Goncourts argument about any divine bookkeeper being far too overworked if He
accorded us all some further existence feels almost plausible.
In one of my novels I had a character imagine that there must be other possibilities
beyond the brute either/or, the ultimate would-you-rather, of 1. God exists, or 2. God
doesnt exist. So there were various alluring heresies, like: 3. God used to exist, but
t any more; 4. God does exist, but has abandoned us; 8. God did exist, and will exist
again, but doesnt exist at the moment He is merely taking a divine sabbatical (which
would explain a lot); and so on. My character got up to number 15 (there is no God, but
there is eternal life) by the time he, and I, reached the end of our imagining powers.
ltimate ironist. Just as
scientists set up laboratory experiments with rats, mazes and pieces of cheese placed
behind the correct door, so God might have set up His own experiment, with us playing
rat. Our task is to locate the door behind which eternal life is hidden. Near one possible
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exit we hear distant ethereal music, near another smell a whiff of incense; golden light
gleams around a third. We press against all these doors, yet none of them yields. With
increasing urgency for we know that the cunning box we find ourselves in is called
mortality we try to escape. But what we dont understand is that our non-escaping is the
whole point of the experiment. There are many fake doors, but no real one, because there
is no eternal life. The game thought up by God the ironist is this: to plant immortal
longings in an undeserving creature and then observe the consequences. To watch these
humans, freighted with consciousness and intelligence, rushing around like frantic rats. To
see how one group of them instructs everyone else that their door (which even they cant
open) is the only correct one, and then perhaps starts killing anyone who puts money on a
different door. Wouldnt that be fun?
The experimenting, ironic, games-playing God. Why not? If God made man, or man
made God, in His or his own image, then homo ludens implies Deus ludens. And the other
favourite game He gets us lo play is called Does God Exist? He gives various clues and
arguments, drops hints, appoints agents provocateurs on both sides (didnt that Voltaire do
a good job?), then sits back with a beatific smile on His face and watches us try to work it
out. And dont think that a quick and craven acceptance Yes, God, we always knew you
were there from the start, before anyone else said so, Youre the man! will cut any ice
with this fellow. If God were a class act, I suspect He would approve of Jules Renard.
From “Nothing to Be Frightened of”, by J. Barnes
6. Translate the following extracts paying attention to the traits of postmodernism.
Extract 1
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