On the issue of rendering in English-Ukrainian translation expressive means of psychological portrait presentation

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Odessa national maritime university

On the issue of rendering in English-Ukrainian translation expressive means of psychological portrait presentation

Maslova S. Ya.

Ruda A.V.

Abstract

In the paper the Ukrainian translation of the English article is analyzed in the aspect of the adequacy of the translation performed regarding the accuracy of rendering the stylistic peculiarities of the psychological portrait presentation. The research was carried out on the basis of the article «Margaret Thatcher, «Iron Lady» Who Set Britain on New Course, Dies at 87», published by G.R. Gregory in «The New York Times» in 2013 and its Ukrainian version in the Internet. The article deals with the autobiography of Margaret Thatcher and the psychological portrait of the most powerful female political leader of the 20th century. There has been performed the detailed analysis ofthe linguistic means ofpsychological portrait description in English artistic texts as well as the study of the translation operations employed for rendering stylistic devices in Ukrainian translation. The novelty is in an attempt to analyze the peculiarities of the expressive means employment to describe psychological portraits in English publicist texts and their Ukrainian translations. The objective is to compare the expressive means of psychological portrait in the original English publicist texts and their Ukrainian translations. Psychological portraits are represented as holistic, systematized, selective and objective complex of the data about the individual or group psychology. The factors regarded while analyzing psychological portraits are the social, the historic and behavioral as well as artistic. The urgency of the research is grounded by the necessity of optimizing publicist texts translation quality. The translator's task is to employ translation transformations aimed at the most accurate rendering of stylistic peculiarities of the literary portrait.

Key words: psychological portrait, expressive means, stylistic devices, translation tactics and operations.

Анотація

Маслова С.Я., Руда А.В.

До питання про відтворення в англійсько-українському перекладі виразових засобів представлення психологічного портрету

У статті аналізується переклад українською мовою англійської статті в аспекті адекватності перекладу з урахуванням точності відтворення стилістичних особливостей представлення психологічного портрету. Дослідження провадилось на матеріалі статті Дж.Р. Грегорі «MargaretThatcher, «IronLady» WhoSetBritainonNewCourse, Diesat 87», яка вийшла у виданні «Нью-Йорк Таймс» у 2013 та її української версії в Інтернеті. Стаття присвячена автобіографії Маргарет Тетчер та психологічному портрету найбільш впливової жінки-політика 20 го сторіччя. Було здійснено детальний лінгвістичний аналіз засобів реалізації психологічного портрету в англійських публіцистичних текстах та досліджено перекладацькі операції з відтворення стилістичних засобів зображення психологічного портрету в українському перекладі. У статті досліджено психологізм та засоби його лінгвістичної реалізації. Новизна дослідження вбачається у спробі проаналізувати особливості застосування виразових засобів для зображення психологічних портретів у англомовних статтях і їх українських перекладах та у здійсненні аналізу застосованих перекладацьких тактик і операцій. Мета дослідження полягала у порівнянні мовних засобів вираження у оригінальних текстах та українських перекладах. Психологічні портрети представлені як цілісні, систематизовані та об'єктивні дані щодо психології груп чи індивідів. До уваги взято соціальні, історичні та поведінкові чинники, як і художні. Актуальність дослідження забезпечується необхідністю в оптимізації перекладу публіцистики. Завдання перекладача вбачається як застосування перекладацьких трансформацій із метою забезпечення коректного відтворення стилістичних засобів реалізації психологічного портрету. Перспектива вбачається у дослідженні особливостей перекладу психологічного портрету в художніх творах різних жанрових різновидів.

Ключові слова: психологічний портрет, виразові засоби, стилістичні прийоми, перекладацькі тактики та операції.

Main part

thatcher translation english article

Statement of the problem. The issue of human description still remains relevant in different fields of knowledge like psychology, philosophy, history, political sciences, sociology, philology, pedagogical science and the like. The peculiarities of the literary portrait as the expressive means of psychologism and the issue of linguistic and stylistic aspects were studied by O. Dudar [1] and V. Kaliuschenko [7].

The novelty of the research is in an attempt to investigate linguistic means as the powerful means of psychological portraits review in belles-lettres style. The urgency of the research is grounded by the necessity of optimizing artistic translation quality. The translator's task is to employ translation transformations aimed at the most accurate rendering of stylistic peculiarities of the literary portrait.

Analysis of recent research and publications.

One of the main features of psychological portraits in belles-letters style is «psychologism» defined by V. Kaliuschenko as «the individualized rendering of feelings in their interaction, dynamics and uniqueness» [7, p. 198]. According to M. Kodak, «the artistic and mental components in the poetics system are pivotal as psychologism is determined as «movable esthetics» of its interpreters or the restored complex of poetic ideas, socially relevant views of personalities and historically productive forms of their artistic expression by means of utterances» [5, p. 73].

One of the devices of psychologism is an artistic detail. Artistic details are employed to express artistic content and simultaneously accompany mental processes. V. Kaliuschenko distinguishes the characteristic portrait from the psychological portrait as the one more oriented at emotions, mood and temperament [7, p. 199].

Psychological portraits are one of the ways of individualization [9, p. 126]. Psychological details serve to express the characters' inner world and contribute to esthetic-spiritual communication» [9, p. 127].

«Psychological portrait is understood as the holistic systematized selective but still objective complex of the data about the group psychology. To give a psychological portrait is to determine psychological identity of each personality». [7, p. 306].

According to the typological classification of psychological portraits, the following types are distinguished on the basis of different groundings:

- according to the special purpose: general and specific;

- according to the number of people involved: personal or group;

- according to the preliminary data: VIP or non-VIP;

- according to the content of information: social and demographic, external or internal;

- according to the informational basis: objective or subjective;

- according to the structure: from individual reviews and fragmentary descriptions to the overall psychological portrait.

The theoretical basis for the research was formed by the works by V. Sdobnikov, V. Karabanov, I. Koru - nets, O. Bilous, P. Newmark, O. Dudar, M. Zarytsky, M. Kodak and V. Kaliuschenko.

Task statement. The objective is to compare the expressive means of psychological portraits in the original English artistic texts and their Ukrainian translations. The objective has predetermined the following tasks of the research:

1) to study psychological portrait as a variety of description;

2) to investigate linguistic means as the form of psychological portrait and the translation techniques employed;

3) to distinguish certain means of describing psychological portraits;

4) to analyze translation transformations employed to describe psychological portraits.

The object of the research is represented by linguistic means of psychological portraits. The subject of the research is determined as the translation strategies in the search of language means for describing psychological portraits in belles-lettres texts.

The methodology of the research includes such methods as:

- descriptive method is employed to provide the analysis of the theoretical groundings;

- linguistic stylistic analysis performed on the basis of the stylistic devices both in the source English texts and their Ukrainian translations;

- complex contrastive analysis of the translation techniques employed;

- the method of calculations employed in linguistic analysis of the texts under research.

The novelty is in an attempt to analyze the peculiarities of the expressive means employment to describe psychological portraits in English artistic texts and their Ukrainian translations.

In literature description as a compositional form employed in psychological portrait is one of the ways to characterize protagonists as well as argumentation of their thoughts and moods, description of the settings and scenery, dialogues. All these devices are interwoven in the construction of literary images. The difference between the portrait and other characteristic means is in its transparence and visibility [7, p. 64-70].

Protagonists' portraits possess both individual and common traits. On one hand, protagonists are portrayed as historical and social representatives of certain strata, states or epochs. The appearance, movement and manners also reflect the social environment, personal background, provided with psychological characteristics.

On the other hand, literary personages are individual personalities with certain peculiarities. By means of the thorough selection of linguistic means the author also reveals his own attitude to the characters.

Portrait-description is the most common means of personage characterization, often provided with the author's commentary or general conclusion.

The more complicated variant of personage characteristics is given in portrait-comparison. But the far more complicated is yet portrait-impression. It is distinguished by the absence of common portrait traits and details, the impression from the personage's looks being the priority.

Still of particular attention there is psychological portrait which expresses the protagonist's inner state.

Linguistic means play the first fiddle in the creation of the individual psychological portrait. Linguistic expressivity and high emotivity are achieved at the expense of both expressive and evaluative connotational stylistic components as well as due to the transfer of meaning. The most recurrent stylistic devices at work are metaphors, epithets, metonymies, oxymorons etc.

The distinctive feature of the stylistic devices employed is the binary opposition of the two different word meanings: the meaning registered in the dictionaries and the occasional, contextual meaning.

The most involved in psychological portraits and their rendering in translation lexical stylistic devices according to V. Kaliuschenko [7, p. 80] include:

1) lexical stylistic devices based on the similarity and contiguity (metaphor, antonomasia, zoosemy, personification, metonymy, epithets both metaphorical and metonymical);

2) lexical stylistic devices based on the interaction of logical and emotional meanings - hyperbole, epithet, oxymoron;

3) lexical stylistic devices based on the interaction of two homonyms - zeugma, pun.

The high occurrence of the devices based upon transfer of meaning is due to the metaphorization of the environment in the conscience and the importance of the associative thinking. It is not always clear how to interpret and render in translation this or that association. The employment of metaphors may arouse both positive and negative associations. In this case such lexical transformations as addition or functional replacement or both may be employed. The use of sustained metaphor in its turn presupposes both lexical and grammatical replacements.

Outline of the main material of the study. The research was carried out on the basis of the article «Margaret Thatcher, «Iron Lady» Who Set Britain on New Course, Dies at 87», published by G.R. Gregory in «The New York Times» in 2013 and its Ukrainian translation [6]. The article dealt with the autobiography of Margaret Thatcher and the psychological portrait of this «Iron Lady».

According to the concept of the «think-aloud» translation, introduced by P. Newmark, «the translator decides whether to employ the technique of rendering stylistic peculiarities of the source text and thus to preserve the occasional, fresh, newly coined metaphor or, on the contrary, to omit the metaphor in translation thus realizing the neutralization technique [10, p. 9]. Sometimes the translator would come up with the replacement of stylistic device or would refer to compensation technique.

The challenge of translating stylistic devices from English into Ukrainian is also sometimes grounded by the complexity of the English language. This often results in the transposition of the elements of the sustained metaphor [7, p. 166].

It is relevant for contemporary translation theory to distinguish between conventional and fresh newly coined metaphors, as the translation technique and operations employed depend on the type of metaphor.

The most adequate means of rendering linguistic conventional metaphors is by the search of the full or partial correspondence or contextual analogue while in rendering occasional author's metaphors calque or approximate translation with the simultaneous image creation is preferrable [3, p. 59]. The functional replacement is always employed when both the tactic of relevant information rendering and pragmatic adaptation are at work. It is the pragmatics of the source text, the emotional and evaluative tonality that should be preserved in the first turn.

With metonymy the ways of expression are similar in English and Ukrainian belles-letters styles as metonymy is interpreted as the replacement of the part for the whole, or the whole for the part, or the symbol for the notion, or the container for the contained or the instrument for the function.

Most complex there prove to be such cases of metonymic and metaphoric transfer like synecdoche, antonomasia and reverse or inverted epithets.

It should be noted that epithets are defined as linguistic expressive means aimed at describing the figurative features of the object. Epithets may also render emotive and evaluative information. Epithets are also subdivided into conventional and figurative or author's. Unlike metaphors and metonymies realized chiefly in such parts of speech as verbs and nouns, epithets occur in adjectives and adverbs.

There may be also distinguished similes as complex lexico-syntactic stylistic devices realized only on the level of phrasal. Similes are termed as imaginary or figurative comparisons based upon the similarity of objects where the tenor and the vehicle are explicit and the element of comparison is also present. However, the grounding for epithets may be either explicit or implied.

The last but not the least linguistic means to express psychological portraits is hyperbole aimed at increasing the effect from the utterance.

Conclusions. There has been performed the detailed analysis of the linguistic means of psychological portraits description in English artistic texts as well as the study of the translation operations employed for rendering stylistic devices in Ukrainian translation.

Psychological portraits are represented as holistic, systematized, selective and objective complex of the data about the individual or group psychology. The factors regarded while analyzing psychological portraits are the social, the historic and behavioral as well as artistic. It also should be taken into account that each personality is an individuality.

It has been concluded that esthetic information is of greater importance in psychological portrait rendering. Linguistic means form the basis for the information presentation. So, the first translator's task is to single out linguistic means which are employed to affect the target audience both emotionally and esthetically. However, mechanic copy-pasting of linguistic means from the source text into the target text is not enough to achieve the necessary communicative effect.

It has also been concluded that the challenges in rendering the expressive means of psychological portraits in Ukrainian translation of English artistic texts are mostly due to the national and cultural coloring of the stylistic devices at work. However, imaginary in included into the international and metalinguistic uni - versals, but the groundings for the metaphorization may differ because of the discrepancies in linguistic world pictures for typologically distant languages.

The analysis of the translation tactics employed was based upon V. Sdobnikov's communicational and functional approach in translation theory. The classification of translation transformations was performed in accordance with the research works by V. Kara - banov, I. Korunets and O. Bilous. The concept of the psychological portrait complex linguistic investigation was developed on the basis of the research papers and monographs by O. Dudar, M. Zarytsky, M. Kodak and V. Kaliuschenko.

The results of the linguistic analysis have proved the predominance of such operations as functional replacement (22%), search of partial and full correspondences in stylistic devices rendering (20%), contextual replacement (15%). While the most productive translation tactics there turned out to be the tactic of rendering relevant information (43%), the tactic of pragmatic adaptation (37%) and the tactic of rendering stylistic peculiarities (20%). However, the typological distinctiveness and dissimilarity of the source and target languages predetermined the employment of omission (15%), addition (18%) and transposition (10%) for correct and adequate translation performance.

The psychological portrait was created with the wide application of numerous stylistic devices like metaphors, metonymies, epithets, hyperboles and similes. All these result in the powerful and vivid image of the self-made ambitious decisive inquisitive strong-willed and merciless woman with the explicit features of the political leader and outstanding personality. The perspective is seen in the study of the peculiarities of the psychological portrait rendering in Ukrainian-English translation of publicist texts.

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