This article is devoted to specificity of literary texts translation and significance of idea of concept and influence of culture to the language.
Keywords: translation of literary texts, concept, conceptosphere, phraseological units.
Данная статья посвящена специфике перевода художественных текстов и значению идеи понятия и влияния культуры на язык.
Ключевые слова: перевод литературных текстов, концепт, концептосфера, фразеологизмы.
The current stage of the linguistic development of society and the strengthening of the educational and cultural integration of states in the world community requires extensive knowledge in the field of translation of various types of texts, in particular from English. In this regard, a substantial, theoretical and practical analysis is made of translations of texts relating to all spheres of human activity, the main of which are economic, diplomatic, scientific, technical and socio-cultural. It is known that there are a large number of works (V. Komissarov, A. V. Kunin, L. S. Barkhudarov, etc.) written by practicing translators or researchers in the field of translation, concerning the main linguistic, functional-stylistic, pragma-communicative features of translation texts and discourse in these areas from English language and vice versa.
One of the most widely studied areas of such an analysis is the art of translation, in particular the translation of a literary text. The field of literary text is a specific medium, the interest in which is expressed by professional critics, readers and writers. Translation of texts reflects not only linguistic, but also ethnic, intercultural and communicative features of languages: in this case, English and Russian. In connection with this thought, attention should be paid to the linguoculturological aspects of translation.
The theory of explication of the linguistic picture of the world is an extensive and general idea, which manifests itself in the psychological reproduction of the ongoing actions. So, an explication of the linguistic picture of the world can be called a specific action or even a word in the process of communication, because only communication induces actions, associative representations. The task of each translator is to correctly convey the content and not to miss a single concept, since the keywords are often repeated, designed to attract the attention of the reader.
The focus of modern anthropological-oriented linguistics is the problem of the interaction of man, language and culture. The question of the influence of language and culture, first formulated in the works of ancient philosophers, was developed in the works of V. von Humboldt, who believed that material and spiritual culture are inextricably linked with language, embodied in it and determining the picture of the world of the people; in the studies of E. Sepir and B. Warf, who formulated the theory of «linguistic relativity», it is stated that differences between national cultures are determined by differences in languages [1; p.39].
The explication theory of the linguistic picture of the world includes both universal general content, determined by the objectivity and reality of the world as an object of cognition, and national-specific content, based on the peculiarities of the cultural and historical development of people, which allows us to study the linguistic picture of the world in a linguistic aspect by establishing facts of the interlanguage similarities and differences and modeling of the semantic fields of the language, and in the cultural aspect in order to identify national-specific way of thinking of the nation, its attitude and perception of the world [2; p.29].
The scientist — linguist V. Maslova offers the following definition to this concept: «The theory of the explication of the linguistic picture of the world reflects the way of speech-thinking activity, characteristic of this or that era, with its spiritual, cultural and national values».
Language — spontaneously arising in human society and developing a system of articulate sound signs, serving for the purpose of communication and capable of expressing the totality of knowledge and ideas of a person about the world. [3; p.28]
The language of a certain people is an exact mirror of his life, mode of life, his environment. It is the main tool for the formation and manifestation of the worldview of the people, their views on the realities of life. «In the process of forming values, reality «presses» on the language, trying to capture its features in it...» [4; p.10].
Language, being an exact mirror of the culture and life of the people, undergoes changes or additions, if any, take place in the surrounding world of various people. At any stage in the development of national culture, the language of an ethnos reflects it fully and adequately.
Thus, the theory of explication of the linguistic picture of the world is not a frozen static set of concepts and symbols, but a dynamic system in constant evolution.
The explication theory of the linguistic picture of the world is reflected in the keywords — «concepts». The term «concept» in linguistics is both old and new at the same time. In 1928, S. A. Askoldov published an article «Concept and word», where he defined «universal» (concept) as «a mental formation that replaces an indefinite number of objects of the same kind in our process of thought» [5; p.267]. But until the middle of the last century, the idea of «concept» was not perceived as a term. Only in the 80s. XX century again the idea of «concept» arises as a term that serves to explain the units of the mental processes of human consciousness.
The translation of concepts from one language to another is directly related to the cultural and social content of the translated concept, attached to it within the framework of a specific cultural environment. Depending on how a particular person, a native speaker of a language, understands the concept in question, its transmission in a given language depends. Thereby, the external formal transfer of a concept from one language to another should reflect the whole gamut of linguoculturological properties acquired by him due to a certain historical, cultural, psychological experience of a native speaker [6; p.25].
Translation, as a linguistic phenomenon, is a very ancient form of human activity. As soon as groups of people were formed in the history of mankind whose languages were different from each other, «bilinguals» appeared that helped communication between «multilingual» groups. With the advent of writing, such translators-interpreters were joined by written translators who translated various official, religious, and business texts. From the very beginning, translation performed an essential social function, making interlanguage communication possible.
It should be noted that the concept is much more influential and significant, if richer the national, class professional, family and personal experience of a person who uses the explication of the linguistic picture of the world.
The «conceptosphere» of the national language is the more colorful, the richer the whole culture of the nation — its literature, folklore, science, visual art (it also has a direct relationship to language and, therefore, to the national «conceptosphere»), it is also correlated with all the historical experience of the nation and religion in particular.
It is known that when studying translation as a special type of verbal communication, the theory of translation is not limited to the analysis of its linguistic abilities, because translation is not only the interaction of languages, but also the interaction of cultures, as was said earlier. «... the translation reflects the situation of generation of the source text and the situation of translation. It is hardly possible to adequately describe the translation process, not taking into account the fact that it is carried out not by an idealized construct, but by a person whose value and psychological orientation inevitably affects the final result...» [7; c.215]
It should be noted that a number of scientists have found that the translator equally (or almost equally) owns both the source and the translating cultures. But in our opinion, this is far from the case, and in most cases «... the translator very roughly estimates, and, therefore, translates certain elements or entire categories of the source text in a comparatively cultural sense»... [8; c.9]
In the process of translation, it should be noted that the literary and artistic style, in a number of styles, occupies an independent, special place. It performs an aesthetic function, although it simultaneously directs the actions of people, the text educates, convinces, spiritualizes, inspires... the linguist scientist M. Lvov writes. [9; p.142]
Literature reflects the world by means of not only logical, but mainly sensory cognition, in artistic images created and transmitted in the form of speech. Accordingly, the aesthetics of creative activity embraces the world of not only the beautiful, but also the ugly, not only the sublime, but also the base, evaluates it enthusiastically or ironically. Literature enriches the spiritual world of a person, helps to perceive the world in its infinite variety and complexity. The writer uses the wealth of language accumulated over the centuries, but he enriches it, for he lacks not only words — he is looking for new constructions of the literary text: this way was born Onegin stanza. The literary space of a major prose work, such as «War and Peace» by L. N. Tolstoy, requires different styles. In this novel, the folk-poetic style, and the French-Russian dialogues, and extensive scientific monologues, and texts of official documents, and the epistolary style, and aphorisms, and parodies, and soldier humor, and the colloquial-everyday style of various social levels coexist and interact.
Translation of literary texts is complicated by high semantic workload, and the translator often has to create a text in another language again, and not reproduce it from another language.
It is well known that works of art are very rich in phraseological units. The transfer of phraseological units is a very difficult task. Due to its semantic richness, imagery, laconism and brightness, phraseology plays a very important role in language. It gives speech expressiveness and originality, and when translating phraseological units, the translator needs to convey his meaning and reflect his imagery, finding a similar expression in Russian and not losing sight of the stylistic function of phraseological units. In translating phraseological units, great importance is given to the context.
Phraseologisms are a special type of combinations, the main feature of which is «partial or complete discrepancy between the content plan and the expression plan, which determines the specifics of the idiom» [10, p. 127] and, of course, will affect the choice of methods and ways of translation.
The translator has to deal with the greatest difficulties when working with phraseological units based on modern realities. Only a few of them quickly become popular and penetrate international dictionaries, for example: «Ангелы ада» — «Hell’s Angels», «Поле чудес» — «the Land of Wonders».
In addition, historical expressions or catchphrases of various kinds should be mentioned. The difficulty lies in the fact that sometimes they have several correspondences, both in the original language and in the translation language. Consider the phrase, the authorship of which is attributed to the leader of the English Revolution, Oliver Cromwell.
«Put your trust in God…and keep your powder dry!»
If the military theme is traced in the context, then the expression can be translated literally: «Rely on God and keep the powder dry!» But historically, the expression has become very popular in English culture and is often used in everyday situations and does not cause any historical associations.
To improve the education of each person, it is important to get acquainted with the masterpieces of world literature. However, not everyone can learn the works in the original language. Only thanks to the translators-writers do the invaluable treasures of world literature become available to us.
A literary translation should be comprehensively understood from the point of view of the original, here you can’t do only knowledge of a foreign language, you need a special flair, mastery — to be able to feel the language forms, play on words, and be able to convey the artistic image. For example, if, firstly, in the minds of the Russian people «душа» is opposed to the «тело» (soul and body), then in the English expression the «mind» and «body» — «mind and body» are contrasted (cf. also: камень с души свалился — it is a load off smb's mind); secondly, this word in Russian — unlike English — is a frequency one and is included in a number of expressions that are rarely translated into English with the word «soul» — the closest to the Russian word in semantic terms, but far from covering the whole variety its manifestations. Of the 34 Russian phraseological units with the word «soul» cited by S. G. Ter-Minasova, only 4 are translated using the word «soul» (mainly in the meaning of man — not a soul); «heart» is often used as «heart» (15 times): всей душой — with all one's heart, работать с душой — to put one's heart to one's work; there is also the word conscience «совесть»: кривить душой — to act against one's conscience « [11; p.162–170].
A number of linguistic scholars believe that the text is not a chaotic pile of units of different language levels, but an ordered system in which everything is interconnected and interdependent. The complete design of the units of the previous levels — words and sentences — does not contradict the possibility of their division into more elementary components. The same thing happens with the text. Its systematic and structured nature does not deny, but, on the contrary, suggests the possibility of its formal (architectonic) and substantial (compositional) division. Therefore, works of large forms (books) are divided into parts, chapters, paragraphs that develop their own local topics and thus have a certain formal and substantial independence. It manifests itself, for example, in the possibility of publishing or stage performance of a single fragment from a novel, narrative, drama. But such a «text segment auto-semantics» has a relative character, for it requires mandatory support for the whole text. In other words, the category of separability appears in indissoluble dialectical unity with the category of connectedness [12; p.71].
Hereby, the text is the linguistic fabric of the work, which reflected the human soul, his intellect, goals, aspirations. The text is a shot of linguistic creative process, presented in the form of a specific work. [9; p.163]
Translation of literary texts is an art that has nothing to do with the craft and that means — the translator should be endowed with a gift of writing. The art of translation has its own characteristics, and yet, translators have much more in common with original writers than in differences. This is perfectly stated in the novel «Юнкер» by A. I. Kuprin: «... to translate from a foreign language, it is not enough to know, even perfectly, this language, but you also need to be able to penetrate the deep, vibrant, diverse meaning of each word and the mysterious the power of combining certain words. «
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