Imagery in Translation

possible, or are going to create some particular manner of pre­senting it in Russian.

• Look for some stylistic manner in Russian literature that would be parallel to the source. You may try Bunin, Chekhov or Kuprin.

• Create your glossary finding Russian counterparts for the problematic words and names.

• When translating the text, mark the grammatical prob­ lems to be solved.

• Think over the italicised words and their value in the source text. Should you italicise them in Russian?

• Point out the devices used to convey of irony in the source text and choose their Russian counterparts carefully.

• Read your Russian version aloud to feel the rhythm of it. Compare the impression produced by reading the source text aloud.

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Decide on the main principle of translation for this text:

liether you are going to keep to the source structures as close as _

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Практикум по художественному переводу

Imagery in Translation

PROSE UNIT3: TRANSLATING EVELYN WA UGH INTO R USSIAN

Introductory Notes

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was born in Hampstead, the second son of Arthur Waugh, a publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Oxford. He published his first novel, Decline and Fall, in 1928. That novel was followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), and others. All those years he was extensively travelling in Europe, Africa, Central America. During World War II he was first commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. His novels, Put Out More Flags (1942) and Brideshead Revisited (1945), and his historical trilogy Sword of Honour (1952-1961), a brilliant and witty satire to the "good old England," were marked by the events, ideas and emotions associated with the war and the sea of changes which it caused in people's minds and modes of life. In the Preface to Brideshead Revisited he wrote: "It seemed then that the ancestral seats which were our chief national artistic achievement were doomed to decay and spoliation like the monasteries in the six­teenth century... Much of this book therefore is a panegyric preached over an empty coffin."

Black Mischief one of the of author's, first books was writ­ten after a winter spent in East and Central Africa. The scene of the novel is a fanciful confusion of many territories, events, and characters, mostly associated with Zanzibar. In those years it was impossible to imagine that any part of Africa should be indepen­dent of European administration. As Waugh noted thirty years

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later, "history has not followed what then seemed its natur course."

Decline and Fall, his first novel, was an immediate sw cess. The history of Paul Pcnnifeather, a modest Oxford stude: of theology, caught up, quite by chance, in a tremendous whirl i adventures, is depicted with a professional brilliance, though tl writer was still quite young then. It is in this novel that Evelj Waugh showed his peculiar sense of humour and proved himse to possess outstanding fantasy and a rich palette of linguistic teel niques — irony first and foremost. Some of the characters fir mentioned in Decline and Fall would later appear in his oth novels. His critical perception of the values of contemporary Ei glish society and the decline in moral standards was embodied fantastical characters and situations depicted with acuteness ar strange sympathy like that of a surgeon performing an unpleasa but necessary operation.

One of his main motifs is cultural legacy of the past. It present in the conversation of personages, in quotations and all sions; it manifests itself through a diversity of artistic, litera and historical names. Waugh's cultural position is developed I comical imitation of the ignorant speech and low-brow interes of a nouveau riche family as well as through the grotesque pi tures and figures of the world created by the author, a world whi< looks like that "good old England" he both loved and mocked.

Being a brilliant novelist, Evelyn Waugh wrote a few, n table short stories spanning a broad scale of humour, sometim soft and sad, sometimes sharp and even "black." The Cruise st ry is written as a collection of letters and post cards from a foe ish and ignorant young girl, the daughter of a rich family, wl lives as if floating over the surface of life, not knowing, nor сг ing to know its real values. The language of the letters imitat the colloquial jargon of society to reveal lack of education well as lack of that noble spirituality which alone may test tl true core of a personality. The character speaks for herself ai thus reveals her own cultural and spiritual insolvency.

53;iK. № 50 '

Практикум по художественному переводу

Apart from fiction, Evelyn Waugh wrote books of literaryicism, essays and religious biographies. In 1930 he was re-'ed into the Catholic Church, which was an important event in spiritual life. He was married and had six children.

;k for comparison:

use — Морское путешествие

CRUISE

S.S. Glory of Greece

Darling,

Well, the first day it was rough and I got up and felt odd in bath and the soap wouldn't work on account of salt water you and came into breakfast and there was a corking young man э said we are the only ones down may I sit here and it was ng beautifully and he had steak and onions but it was no good d to go back to bed just when he was saying there was nothing idmired so much about a girl as her being a good sailor good-s how sad.

The thing is not to have a bath and to be very slow in all vements. So next day it was Naples and we saw some Bertie rches and then that bit that got blown up in an earthquake and a ir dog killed they have a plaster cast of him goodness how sad. ia and Bertie saw some pictures we weren't allowed to see and I drew them for me afterwards and Miss P. tried to look too. 1 ^ren4 told you about Bill and Miss P. have I? Well, Bill is rather but clean looking and I don't suppose his very old not really I an and he's had a very disillusionary life on account of his wife о he says I wont say a word against but she gave him the rasp-ry with a foreigner and that makes him hate foreigners. Miss P. ailed Miss Phillips and is lousy she wears a yachting cap and is itch. And the way she makes up to the second officer is no ones iness and its clear to the meanest intelligence he hates her but part of the rules that all the sailors have to pretend to fancy the i