1943-1 (661229), страница 2
Текст из файла (страница 2)
The notion of coloring appeared in the literary criticism terminology and meant a special quality of literary work, speech characteristic of personage, a special emotional or linguistic look of separate literary work or an writer’s works, that is all peculiarities and originalities. Coloring of a word shows its belonging to a certain people, country, concrete historical epoch.
National (local) and historical coloring of realia is a new additional meaning to its main signification. A.S. Pushkin uses realias евнух, гарем, гяур, чубук, щербет in Bahchisaray’s fountain; their specific coloring gives an oriental coloring to the poem. According to dictionaries щербет is an oriental fruit soft drink and it differs from lemonade by its regional belonging and it is considered as a coloring. This neutral word turns into realia owing to relation with this region. But if an inhabitant of this region who works in the West faces with this word it gives him an association connected with his motherland, his recollections and feelings.
It makes us consider coloring a part of connotative meaning of a realia.
It is appropriate to compare realias – words with specific national and historical coloring – connotative lexis – with words deprived of such coloring. We may use two words – bird cherry and rook. They are only details of nature: bird cherry is a tree that grows in Northern America, Europe and Asia; and rook is specie of birds from crown family. These words are not realias because of their wide-spreadness and they are not connected with people or country. However associations connected with bird cherry (the height of spring) and rook (expectation of spring) make a heart of Russian man quicken. He connects their connotatively with realia not turning them into realia.
Another example touches up some difficulties translating of the title of famous Russian film Летят журавли into the French language: the French word grue also means silly girl and a woman of easy virtue.
So they had to substitute the word “crane” for the word “stork”.
In these examples connotative words in contradiction to realia have full and significant equivalents.
“Inconvenient” word is often substituted for its functional analogies. Foe example, bird cherry can be substituted for early blooming tree or bush – for England it can be substituted for plum or cherry-tree or even for lilac; instead of rook they can use any convenient bird. The main idea is to evoke a reader of translated text the same associations that has a reader of origin text.
The transmission of connotative word by means of devices that are characteristic feature for the transmission of realia usually leads to an undesirable results: a corresponding word must evoke a definite reaction.
Classifying the realia we noted that realias were allocated according to their place or/and time. It is often happens that realia that means the same or close material notions can be from different places and historical rubric: that is, they differ from each other according to connotative meaning, coloring. For example, supreme organ is called seim in Poland, Supreme Court in Russia, cortes in Spain and Portugal, Public Meeting in Bulgaria, bundestag in Germany, rikstaf in Swiss, storting in Norway, folketing in Denmark, knesset in Israel. All these words mean Parliament and they do not differ much from each other but their traditional names represent characteristic national realia. Each of them has its own features that belong only to it. However, but for these distinctions, national and historical coloring would not allow substitution for another word in translation. Such substitution would destroy all coloring, to be more exact; it would lead to anachronisms and analogisms that can destroy the harmony, so called truth of life.
It is clearly seen when such close in meaning word like хайдутин and клефт are compared. Both of them mean peasant-partisans who fought against Turkish ruling; both of them mainly attacked local Turkish feudalists and representatives of Turkish Administration, and also their landowners who called them “thieves” or “bandits”; both of them acted in the same historical epoch (the time of Osman Dominion on the Balkans). These dates about клефт are related with хайдутин; the only difference is that хайдутин is Bulgarian and клефт is Greek. But it is enough to be impossible to translate хайдутин as клефт.
Connotations and coloring are part of meaning that means they can be translated equal with semantic content of a word. If a translator managed to convey only a semantic lexical unit the translated text lost its coloring for the reader.
But there are cases when connotation of a realia dies down, erasures. Such erasure logically leads to the turning of realia into common, uncolored word.
To distinguish this phenomenon from loss of coloring in a translation we use a term “erasure” of coloring or connotation (erased reality).
Some exotic words can be adopted by language and lose their exotic character.
To lose its status realia must lose quality that differs it from a common word, that is loss of coloring. Here are some examples.
1. It will take much time to turn proper realia such as Russian пирожок into national uncolored, neutral word entered in the kitchens and languages of many countries and to make people forget its strange origin.
Related to a strange realia it will also take much time to adopt it into a language. It can turn into usual borrowing in the result of intensive usage of this object in private life depriving it both original national coloring and a kind of alliance.
It seems that international and regional realias are to lose their status of realia at first owing to their wide-spreadness. Many international realias go around the world without losing their national originality. For example, the names of money. There is another case with regional realias. Their national coloring is almost equal to national but it is limited by its regional belonging. For example, “the eastern coloring” is close to Syrian, Turkish and Egyptian etc. All above-mentioned regarding to proper realias is equal for national and regional realias.
2. These are the general considerations about coloring erasure or color keeping that depends on peoples and countries. But there are positions where color erasure depends on proper realia and its function in speech.
Often the realias can have an extended meaning in the context.
3. Sometimes a realia can be used in a text not in the direct but in the figurative meaning. For example щербет can be used in Bulgarian language as an adjective in the meaning of something oversweet and it is almost similar with Russian сироп.
In general we may say about realia using in the figurative meaning in all cases of their usage as tropes, metaphor and comparison. When an author says about mushroom’s cap “about two kopecks size” he does not mean a kopeck as a kind of money but only its two signs: its size and its round form, so the kopeck here has only word cover.
For example, when an author describes land that is flat like a pan-cake he takes only one characteristics of a pan-cake: its flatness and plane and Russian reader even does not think about pan-cake as a food but it is only an image that author promoted with the help of trope.
The same with “stone jungles” and “cowboys of cold war” etc.
Some adjectives derived from mentioned realias can be literary comparisons and metaphors. Using such words as богатырский, стопудовый, аршинный, саженный at first we look at their figurative meaning, certain signs but not on their sign as a realia: for example, пудовый means very heavy, грошовый means very unimportant, cheap.
4. Among these examples there were phraseological units and set expressions as well, where realias lose their status more often than in the mentioned cases.
In these four cases realias are to lose their coloring that is the status of ralia is to turn into common language unit. However, if we look more attentively we shall see that a total erasure is not possible. If it happens it will be an exception.
For example, macaroni (international realia) and tyubeteyka (regional realia). Macaroni, also spaghetti entered in the languages by way of transcription. These words appeared in the languages having kept the meaning of national Italian dish. The best example is Italian scornful nickname baked macaroni pudding. Tyubeteyka also did not lose its oriental coloring in spite of its wide-spreadness in the USSR and even on Gorky’s and Kuprin’s heads reminds East.
One should take into account all above-mentioned choosing a translation style in these cases.
The transcription is usual way of translation of such words. Ruble, macaroni, tyubeteyka keep their form after translation.
Another case when realia is wrong used or when it is a part of phraseologism. Right translation is stipulated with finding the most concordant and equivalent words that is usually deprived of coloring in the translation as a usual lexical unit. For example, вершок in Goncharov’s story is translated into the English language as a miserable part. Дюйм translated from English inch is a realia but it also may have an extended meaning.
Realia preservation in trope function (comparison, juxtaposition, metaphor etc.) could mean the volume definition of one thing unknown by author. If, for example, an English faces with two kopecks coin with the help of that we define a size of mushroom cap in Russian translation he would never know the mushroom size. Here a realia almost totally lost its natural coloring: in one language a reader almost does not understand its meaning, seeing only the given quality indicator. Transcription is possible in two languages only as an exception, for example, international realia that indicator is known in both languages. But it is easier to translate a realia as a neutral function equivalent because in the original text realia is used without connotative meaning.
But even in the third and fourth positions realia is kept. For example, translating comparison we usually substitute a strange realia for ours: it is not always convenient to use such phrases as как блин. The same is with a realia that forms phraseologism.
In conclusion one should notice that translating a realia in one or another means it is wanted to lose a trope and accordingly phraseologism. Trope should be transferred by tropes, phraseologism by phraseologism; only “fulling” will differ from origin one.
5. There are many cases of realia translation in the comparison when the realia not only loses its coloring but also receives excessive connotation and they are wide-spread. An author compares the contents of strange realia with his own realia. And in a translation one notion is happened to be denoted with the two realias: internal and external. What should a translator do to convey the content of realia without coloring losing?
There are some theoretical variants.
At first a translator should transcribe each separate realia. For example, we can face with such translation from the Czech language: “In the evening a young teacher couple … invited us for barbecue. It reminded us our evening by the camp fire where we did not do shpekachkis.” These two words: barbecue and shpekachkis are explanations of one unknown word by another.
At second place a translator can substitute an internal realia for his proper realia. For example, he should substitute shpekachkis - for a regional realia – Caucasus shashlik. As a result a reader would be able to get more clear notion about Australian dish (barbecue is a Haitian word that was taken by the English language from Spanish and then was borrowed by Australian). But a reader would be astonished hearing from Czech about “evenings with shashlik”. Theoretically this variant is more vicious because it leads to mixture of different realias that belong to different nations.
The third possibility is to refuse transcription of both realias and to convey their contents with the help of descriptive translation that approximately can sound so: “… in the evening we were invited for a picnic that reminded us our evenings by a camp fire and we ate meat grilled on a spit.” But this translation deprives the text of Australian coloring.
And, at last, the fourth variant consists in transcription of external realia and conveying internal realia with its functional equivalent. And we shall have the next sentence: “In the evening … a young teacher pair invited us for barbecue. It reminded us our evenings by camp fire when we ate meat grilled on a spit.”
The last variant is considered to be more successful because the translation is true and the translator managed to keep coloring having transcribed main realia.
In Margaret Aliger’s notes “Chilean summer” we face with more difficult case: “… it is possible to eat here, one woman bakes pies – empanados. Empanados is something similar with chebureks, they are very hot, tasty and big.” Here we have three realias: the main external Spanish - empanados that is explained as Russian national pies and one regional Caucasus – chebureks. In the translation one should keep the main realia because it stands in the center of the author’s attention and other realias should be substituted for neutral.
Analogisms and anachronisms.
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