Imagery in Translation
steal it. I was invited. (She turns with huffy dignity and disappears through the back parlor.)
Tyrone (Sighs — then summoning his actor's heartiness.): Come along, dear. Let's have our dinner. I'm hungry as a hunter.
Mary (Comes to him — her face is composed in plaster again and her tone is remote.): I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, James. I couldn't possibly eat anything. My hands pain me dreadfully. I think the best thing for me is to go to bed and rest. Good night, dear. (She kisses him mechanically and turns toward the front parlor.)
Tyrone (Harshly): Up to take more of that God-damned poison, is that it? You'll be like a mad ghost before the night's over!
Mary (Starts to walk away — blankly): I don't know what you're talking about, James. You say such mean, bitter things when you've drunk too much. You're as bad as Jamie or Edmund. (She moves off through the front parlor. He stands a second as if not knowing what to do. He is a sad, bewildered, broken old man. He walks wearily of through the back parlor toward the dining room.)
CURTAIN
EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION
Read more about Eugene O'Neill and his plays and dis cuss the aesthetics and visions of the time.
Read the rest of the Journey to feel the context of the scene on a wider scale.
Study the language of the characters and their manner of speech to reconstruct the rhythmic melody of each of them in the dialogue.
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Практикум
по художественному переводу
Analyse the moods of characters and reconstruct the gen eral atmosphere of the dialogue.
Read the text aloud (do role reading) and assess the time every character takes in the scene.
Study the vocabulary of the text to identify translation problems and ways to their solution.
Study the syntax of the speech to be performed and iden tify translation problems.
Analyse stylistic variants of the characters' speech and reconstruct them in Russian.
Translate the text literally, read it aloud and see whether the result is performable.
Try to follow the rhythmic pattern of each character as identified in English. Do necessary amendments to your literal translation.
Use the experience of the comparison task.
Discuss the result.
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Imagery in Translation
D
RAMA
UNIT2:
TRANSLATING EDWARD ALBEE INTO RUSSIAN
Introductory Notes
Edward Franklin Albee (born in 1928) is an American playwright, one of the famous dramatists of the 1950s-1960s associated with the so called Theatre of the Absurd. The term "absurd" is used in the meaning it was formulated in Camus's essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942), where it was stated that the world is purposeless and indecipherable, the absurdity of which causes in man the feelings of frustration and bewilderment. According to the principles of the Theatre, the actions and dialogues of the plays are usually meaningless, senseless, contradictory. The reader — and spectator — of the plays is left bewildered and puzzled, for there may be no obvious logic in such a play, just a flow of incomprehensible dialogues, strange behaviour and lack of action. Yet, by some strange chemistry, these plays make you think and understand things better, trouble your imagination and sharpen your feelings and relations with the world and people.
The first (and most famous) play by Albee was The Zoo Story (195 8). It was staged at the same off-Broadway theatre where early works of Eugene O'Neill had been staged 50 years ago. Even when famous and renowned, Albee disregarded commercial theatres of Broadway. He believed that they presented what the audience wanted, rather than what is new and provocative. He thought that the Broadway public "are basically lazy audiences who want mere entertainment" and demand not big plays but big stars.
Edward Albee, in his best plays, is a sharp and shrewd crit-icist of the today's society. His absurd-looking situations and dialogues have much sense in themselves, for they turn the reality
inside out and show people their own hidden and suppressed emo-
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Практикум
по художественному
переводу
tions, reasons and aims. The feeling of estrangement of man in the modern society has found its expression in his plays. The playwright is a skilful dramatist with a sharp feeling of the scene and tone. Some of his dialogues and remarks sound real poetry due to the shape, colouration and rhythmic value of words he has found for them.
The Zoo Story presents his wits and talent. The content seems really absurd; it tells how Peter, a gentle, well-dressed publisher and well-mannered intellectual, on a Sunday afternoon in the Central Park of New York meets a Jerry, lean and hungry, lost and lonely underdog. Peter tells Jerry that he lives in one of the fashionable "high-income" districts of New York (the East 70lhs streets), with a wife, two lovely daughters and a pair of parakeets, his life full of comfort and measure.
Jerry lives alone in a small room without a soul to speak or turn to. He tells of a mixed-up childhood, always drunken parents. He emphaticelly asks Peter if he wants to know what happened at the Zoo, but the story never comes to the point.
The two men speak the same English language, but they fail to understand each other because they live as if in two separate worlds, incapable to share the experience of each other. The impenetrable wall of estrangement, prejudices, fears and stereotypes is being built with words. They are mostly "absurd" words, which do not say what is meant, but threaten, puzzle and irritate.
It is no easy task for translator to reconstruct this wall in the Russian language and associate it with Russian speaking habits and associations.
Task for comparison:
The Zoo Story — Про зоопарк
THE ZOO STORY The players:
Peter:
A man in his early forties, neither fat nor gaunt, neither handsome nor homely. He wears tweeds, smokes a pipe, carries
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