Some peculiarities of Ernest Seton-Thompson‘s The Biography of a Silver Fox; or Domino Reynard of Goldour town translated by М.K. Chukovsky

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Some peculiarities of Ernest Seton-Thompson`s The Biography of a Silver Fox; or Domino Reynard of Goldour town translated by М.K. Chukovsky

M.Yu. Volkova

Annotation

Визначено роль Е. Сетона-Томпсона як засновника жанру анімалістичного оповідання та зазначено його внесок у розвиток національної канадської літератури. Було виокремлено характерні риси героїв його оповідань: тварин, які наближені до людей. Визначено особливості літературного перекладу, що має на меті відтворити ідеї, відчуття, трансформуючи образи автора за допомогою матеріалу іншої мови, з'ясовано хто серед сучасних дослідників займається вивченням цього аспекту в сучасному перекладознавстві. Також було зазначено розбіжності між оригінальним текстом оповідання Е. Сетона-Томпсона "The biography of a Silver Fox; or Domino Reynard of Goldour ^wn" та його перекладом М. Чуковського, було визнано переклад адекватним: часткова зміна тексту оригіналу засобами мови перекладу не вплинуло на загальне сприйняття твору. М. Чуковський відтворив думки автора, зберіг зміст, систему образів та стиль автора, сюжетну своєрідність оригінального тексту. Визначено особливості перекладу М. Чуковського, граматичні та лексичні трансформації, використані при перекладі.

Ключові слова: переклад, анімалістичне оповідання, адекватність, стилістичний засіб, образ.

Была сформулирована роль Э. Сетона-Томпсона как родоначальника жанра анималистического рассказа и его вклад в развитие национальной канадской литератури. Были обозначены характерные черты героев его рассказов: животных, приближенных к людям. Определены особенности литературного перевода, цель которого отобразить идеи, ощущения, трансформируя образы автора с помощью материала другого языка, выяснено кто среди современных исследователей занимается изучением данного аспекта в современном переводоведении. Также было установлено отличие между оригинальным текстом рассказа Э. Сетона- Томпсона и его переводом М. Чуковского; перевод признан адекватным: частичное изменение текста оригинала при помощи приемов языка перевода не повлияло на общее восприятие текста произведения. Были выделены особенности перевода thompson animal personages

М. Чуковского, грамматические и лексические приемы, использованные при переводе.

Ключевые слова: перевод, анималистический рассказ, адекватность, стилистический прием, образ.

The role of Ernest Seton-Thompson as a writer who started the genre of animal shortstory and his contribution into the national Canadian literature are discussed in the article. Peculiar features of animal-personages from his short-stories which are close to people were singled out. The peculiarities of the literary translation which aim is to reflect ideas, feelings transforming the author's images with the help of another language material, the main features that make it different from a classical one were stated. Contemporary scholars who scrutinize this aspect in modern translation studies were found out. The differences between the original text of E. Seton-Thompson's short-story "The biography of a Silver Fox; or Domino Reynard of Goldour Town" and the text of translation and its translation by M. Chukovsky were analyzed in the given article. The translation can be called adequate as some change of content and form of the original text by means of the target language did not impact into general perception of the short-story in its translation. The translator conveys the author's ideas provoking reader`s reaction to the story. М. Chukovsky preserved its content, the system of images and the author's style and plot identity of the original text. Peculiarities of his translation, main grammar and lexical transformations used in the translation were marked.

Keywords: translation, animal short-story, adequacy, stylistic device, image

A talented writer, an artist-naturalist Ernest Seton-Thompson started the genre of animal short-story which in its turn became the starting point of the national Canadian literature development reflecting the ideas of national Canadian self-consciousness. The author for the first time illustrated animals' behaviour, using tales based on real facts. In his creative works he always followed the aim "to stop if possible useless killing of animals". That is why animals in his books are the creatures close to people. E. Seton- Thompson returned "our younger brothers" from fairy world where they could speak, followed people in everything into their real habitat. Animals in his stories are really personified: they love and hate, cry and are happy as well as people. But they are not personages of the fairy-tales: they are real animals and birds who live in their fantastic world, the mystery of which the writer wanted to depict. He characterizes "psychology" of his characters that attracts readers' attention to their fate.

It is difficult to say that E. Seton-Tompson's creative works are fully studied despite the set of researches of Canadian literature especially those who consider them from the point of view of translation and comparative analysis. Thus, the given problem needs to be solved. It can be done partly on the example of one of the famous E. Seton- Thompson's short-stories from the collection "Stories about Animals" (1909). It is an animal story "The biography of a Silver Fox; or Domino Reynard of Goldour Town", in which the writer tells the story of a black-brown fox Domino.

"Domino" was thought by the author as a set of short-stories which were written as a result of his long observations of animals' life in Canada and the USA. These are artistically developed notes of a naturalist. The story is difficult from the point of view of its composition. Sometimes it is even difficult to call it a short-story: apart from Domino there is a number of other personages with their own life stories in it. There are many author's descriptions of nature. Unlike a short-story it has wider prolonged in time system of actions. Thus, "Domino" can be called an animal story where the life of the black-brown fox in the natural surrounding is depicted.

Being a fox-cub Domino differed from the other fox-cubs by smartness. Having grown up, it became the best fox among the other foes in its habitat. None could overcome Domino in appearance, strength, bravery and cunning. The image of the fox opposes the image of its enemy - a dog Gekla who always hunts the fox but cannot catch it. But once having a fight with the dog Domino won.

While translating the given short-story M. Chukovsky accurately reflected the sense and details of the story widely using different translation techniques to convey the content of the original into Russian.

Literary translation is a peculiar type of translation the aim of which is to reflect ideas, feelings and transforming the author's images with the help of another language material. It works not only with the communicative function of the language but also with the aesthetic one as a word is the main element of the language [3]. Translator has to go into details and to be skilled enough. Not only actions but also aesthetic, philosophic views of its author are reflected in the literary work. So the translator should have basic knowledge in many sciences. Image structure of the original text can become a dead scheme if he does not imagine the surrounding in which the book was created, the reasons that brought it to life, circumstances which prolong its life in different surroundings and time.

Another problem of the literary translation is the correspondence of the author's context and the translator's context. In literary translation the context of the latter comes close to the context of the former. The criterion of the coincidence or divergence of both contexts is a correspondence of the data taken from the real life and literature. The writer "goes from reality and his own reality perception to the image created in words. The translator goes from the given text and the reality which is created in imagery with the help of "secondary" perception to the new image appeared in the text of the translation. It cannot be absolutely accurate as the language system of the target language cannot thoroughly convey the content of the original text that leads to loss of a definite information volume. Here the translator's personality who misses some peculiarities of the literary material recoding the text is important" [4, p. 53]. A book cannot be taken out of the context and put into the new soil, the text should be bom again in a new surrounding thanks to the skills and talent of the translator.

One more problem of the literary translation is a problem of accuracy and correctness. As any type of translation it faces some difficulties. While "translating prose the translator faces the problem of divergence in the sense and stylistic expression of words and clauses in different languages. In prose a word has a lexical meaning and demonstrates stylistic tone that leads to a definite change of its peculiarities. A literary text should be translated "not from sound to sound, from word to word, from phrase to phrase" etc [5, p. 260].

A special attention of the translator should be paid the problem of preserving national identity in the translation of literary texts [1, p. 37]. It is very difficult to solve practically. Solving of this problem is connected with the degree of that background knowledge about life depicted in the original text that both the translator and the reader face. Literature of any country has a number of literary works with the national themes and are connected with their own nationality [7, p. 378]. It is possible to solve the problem of national identity only with the notion of organic unity which is created by the content and the form of the literary work, taking into account national specificity, life, language [7 p. 380]. А. Fedorov states that "reflection of national identity is tightly connected with full value of translation: with the degree of true literary images' reflection and their grammar formation and with the character of general national peculiarities used in the translation" [5, p. 382].

Along with the problem of preserving the original text national identity the problem of historic colouring representation becomes important as a literary text epoch influences literary images.

Comparative analysis of the literary text became a key method of investigation in linguistics. It is the analysis of the text form and content translation and those of the original one. In the process of translation there are ties between two texts in different languages. Comparing them it is possible to scrutinize the inner mechanism of the translation, to find out equivalent units, changes in form and content that take place while substituting the unit of the source language by the unit of the target one. Comparative analysis helps understand how to overcome the main difficulties of translation connected with the peculiarities of every language and elements are not reflected in the translation. Every translation is a subjective result of somebody's individual work.

In contemporary linguistics there are many works devoted to the comparative analysis. However the scholars who are engaged in the problem scrutinizing (G. Gachechiladze, I. Kashkyn, V. Koptilov, S. Alekseev, J. Gurova, E. Maslennikova, O. Skuharevska) did not come to a single conclusion about general methods of the literary text linguistic analysis. Scholars give their own methods of comparative analysis of the original text and its translation. Only in correlation these methods can help to analyze the literary text translation thoroughly.

Lexical units of the source language (SL) and target language (TL) rarely coincide in total volume with their meanings. Thus the translator uses lexical transformations - transformations of word-form or word-combination form or their full substitution.

While translating short-story "Domino" М. Chukovsky many times changes words or word-combinations with a wide subject-logical meaning by the unit of the TL with narrower meaning: "The shock had made a tomb of the home..." [2, p. 35] ("Взрыв превратил жилище в могилу." [6]).

In this case owing to the concretization of the verb "make" and noun "home" М. Chukovsky could give a creative type of translation and open the content of the original sentence. Apart from concretization, a device of functional change is used to translate the word "shock" as the meanings given by the dictionary do not correspond to the context: "The new home of the Foxes was a mile away." [2, p. 36] ("Новый лисий дом находился на расстоянии мили." [6].

The choice of the concrete meaning for the verb "was" appeared to be appropriate to the context and atmosphere of the story: "the nearing voices of the foe" [2, p. 48] ("приближающийся лай" [7]; ".and dodged as the forefoot blow descended." [2, p. 117] (".едва успел увернуться от удара переднего копыта."[6.

Describing dogs and a deer it would be correct to change words "voices" and "forefoot" by more concrete ones "лай" and "переднее копыто" instead of neutral ones "голоса" and "передняя нога".

Along with concretization the translator changes language units of the SL which have narrower meaning by the unit with wider meaning using generalization: ".that it rang in my ears for days afterward..[2, p. 59] ("...потом целый день стоял у меня в ушах." [6; "Oh, what a robe he wore!" [2, p. 60] ("О, что это был за мех!" [6; "... his foot-pads, worn to the quick, left bloody tracks ..." [2, p. 193]; ".а стертые до живого мяса лапы оставляли за собой кровавые следы." [6].

In the original text there are cases when the only possibility to convey the sense to the reader is to change the unit of translation by contextual word or word combination which is connected with it logically. Thus, information modulation takes place: ".he waded along and found the cooling waters sweet." [2, p. 48] (".он побрел по мелкой воде против течения, наслаждаясь прохладой.. " [6]; "Those eggs had plenty of time to run the gamut of many and mighty changes before he had need of them."[2, p. 143] ("Куриные яйца могли долго пролежать и подвергнуться множеству изменений, прежде чем понадобятся Домино."[6]; "I think I know just what to do with the coin if he comes my way." [2, p. 172] ("Я уж знаю, что сделать с денежками, если они мне достанутся." [6].

Modulation gives the translator a possibility to use expressions which are known to the reader and help to understand the sense. Moreover, in the sentence "I think I know just what to do with the coin if he comes my way" apart from modulation he used transformation of singularia into pluralia tantum as singular form "the coin" in English corresponds plural form of the word "деньги" in Russian.

To overcome incongruity of English and Russian М. Chukovsky used antonymic translation as one of the most flexible types of transformation of the original details: "They knew little of real trapping." [2 p. 119] ("Они не имели понятия о настоящей ловле капканами." [6]; "...Domino would have made a poor run." [2 p. 145] (".Домино не мог быстро бегать." [6].

Antonymic translation gives the translator a chance to give the meaning and stylistic correspondences to the original more precise.

Among the other lexical transformations used here to avoid the destruction of the TL language norms an addition we can observed: "of any kindred stranger" [2, p. 71] ("от всякого другого животного своей породы" [6]) as well as omission: "would make an observation hop like a spring-bok" [2, p. 68] ("делал високий дозорный прыжок вверх" [6]); "He studied it with ears a-cock and eyes aslant." [2, p. 74] ("Пока он следил за ней, насторожив уши." [6]).

It is widely known that the translation of one language into another is impossible without grammar transformations which are explained by grammar reasons as well as lexical character. But the main role is played by grammar differences in the language structures. Comparing the original text with the translation of the given story it was found out the wide use of this type of transformation by М. Chukovsky.

The use of sentence division is used by the translator rather often: "The lucky man in the township of Goldur, the hundred-thousandth man, was Abner Jukes, and he was not a man at all, but a long-legged, freckle-faced, straw-thatched Yankee boy, who had climbed a tree after a crow's-nest when he should have been bringing in the cows" [2, p. 22] ("В городе Голдере таким счастливцем, одним из ста тысяч, оказался Абнер Джюкс. Это был долговязый, белобрысый, веснушчатый мальчишка, который лазил по деревьям за вороньими гнездами, вместо того чтобы пасти коров [6]).

A complex sentence is transformed into two simple ones that helps to make an accent reader's attention on the personage's characteristics: "Domino turned on him with a savage growl; Blazor threw up his tail, braced himself, and, snarling, showed a fierce array of teeth" [2 p. 77] ("С диким рычаньем Домино обернулся к Рыжему.

Тот поднял хвост, выпрямился и, оскалившись, показал два ряда страшных зубов [6]). So it is possible to avoid sentences overloading with information and to underline every element of the narration.

In the translation text an opposing to sentence division transformation of sentence unity is used: "A strange feeling now sprang up between the sister and brother, and then between mother and son. They began to shrink from the big, splendid brother and at length to avoid him" [2, p. 32] ("Теперь между сестрой и братом и между матерью и сыном отношения изменились: обе лисицы начали сторониться этого высокого красавца лиса и, наконец, стали просто избегать его" [6]); "And then came a change in Snowyruff. She avoided Domino as though he were an enemy. When he tried to follow into the den, she savagely warned him to keep away" [2, p. 94] ("И с Белогрудкой произошла резкая перемена: она стала избегать Домино, как врага, и свирепо рычала на него, когда он пытался следовать за нею в нору" [6). Composition of some sentences into one is used to give the details of the content and to transform the sentence stylistically.

One more device used by M. Chukovsky to transform the sense of the original text is grammatical transformation: "Two granite slabs of rock were wardens of the gate..." [2, p. 36] ("Вход в него охраняли два гранитных камня..." [6]); ".. .the night was near..." [2, p. 192] (".близость ночи..."[6]). М. Chukovsky preserved logical meaning of words and changed the verb "met" into participle "встречавший", noun "wardens" into the verb "охранять" and link verb "was near" into the noun "близость" to follow grammar peculiarities of Russian.

Replacement of sentence parts helped to transform the sense of the SL text into TL adequately: ".His world had so far been a world of love." [2, p. 28] (" До сих пор он жил в мире любви."[6]). The sentence is translated with the help of adjective changed into noun, noun into adverbial modifier of place that is dictated by the difference of word order and its peculiarities in languages. We see concretization of the verb "had been" by "жил" as a result of reflecting the sense of the English sentence: "There were beginnings of wooings and longings in wood and on lake." [2, p. 84] ("В лесах и на озере уже начиналась пора ухаживаний." [6].

Replacement of the adverbial modifier in the given example is dictated by the difference in the way of reflecting the actions and their peculiarities in English and Russian that is connected with the actual sentence division: ".his eye was captured by the luscious clusters of rose-hips." [2, p. 144] (".внимание Домино привлекли ягоды терна."[6]).

In these extracts English Passive Voice construction is substituted by Russian Active one that explains the sense of utterance better.

Having analyzed the original text of the given short-story and its translation demonstrated М. Chukovsky, he was able to reflect the structure, idea and mood of E. Seton-Thompson's text, though it was impossible to preserve fully the structure of separate sentences as a result of differences between languages.

Having analyzed the given E. Seton-Thompson's short-story and its translation by М. Chukovsky one can come to the conclusion that the translator preserved its content, the system of images and the author's style. There are some differences between the original text and its translation but they do not influence the whole impression. Thus, such a translation can be called adequate: changing content and form of the original text by means of TL M. Chukovsky conveys the author's ideas influencing the reader, provoking the reaction to the short-story. He wanted to preserve artistic and plot identity of the original text. In the Russian variant the actions take place in the same sequence taking into account all difficulties of the plot and composition structure.

Thus, in the translation of E. Seton-Thompson's short-story "The Biography of a Silver Fox; or Domino Reynard of Goldour Town" M. Chukovsky widely used different grammatical transformations: sentence unity, sentence division and transformations, grammar replacements; among lexical transformations the most frequently used was modulation which gave him a chance to translate English expressions by corresponding Russian equivalents.

References

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Дюришин Д. Художественный перевод в межлитературном процессе (Проблемы особых межлитературных общностей). - М. : Высшая школа, 1993. - 245 с.

5. Лановик М. Перекладознавчі проблеми компаративістики крізь призму літературознавчих теорій / М. Лановик // Літературознавча компаративістика. - Тернопіль: Ранок, 2002. - С. 256-271.

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