Теория языка | Филологический аспект №01 (117) Январь 2025

Исследование границ перевода

Шугайло Ирина Васильевна
методист, канд. филос. наук, доцент, Российский государственный педагогический университет имени А. И. Герцена
Каменева Ольга Владимировна
старший преподаватель кафедры английской филологии и лингвокультурологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет

Аннотация: Перевод помогает нам понять концептуальное и прагматическое значение текста. Иногда переводчики жертвуют буквальными формальностями или расширяют текст оригинала по своему усмотрению. В некоторых случаях перевод предполагает творческую интерпретацию оригинального текста. Например, в традиции XIX века грамматические пропуски в переводах художественных или романтических текстов были обычным средством поддержки романтического восприятия переводчика как ‘соавтора’. Цель данной статьи – исследовать и описать границы перевода. Модели культурного дискурса поддаются переводу без пропуска каких-либо прагматических оттенков, связанных с контекстом, с помощью различных стратегий перевода. Однако в нашем случае переводчики могут пренебречь буквальными формальностями. Наши результаты могут быть использованы в дальнейшем при преподавании теории языка и практической лингвистики, а также в курсах по культурологии.
Ключевые слова: перевод, методы интерпретации, теория перевода в стиле романтизма, пропуски, билингвальный перевод, монолингвальный перевод, поэтический перевод.

Shugaylo Irina Vasilevna
Associate professor, Methodist, PhD in Philosophy, Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia
Kameneva Olga Vladimirovna
Senior lecturer, Saint-Petersburg State University

Abstract: Translation guides us through the conceptual and pragmatic meaning of the text. Sometimes translators are authorized to sacrifice literal formalities or expand the original at their own consideration. In some cases, translation offers a creative interpretation of the original text. For instance, in the 19th century tradition grammatical omissions in translations of artistic or romantic texts was a custom tool to support the romanticism perception of the translator as a ‘co-creator’. The purpose of the article is to investigate and describe translation borders. Cultural discourse patterns lend themselves to translation without omitting any context-relevant pragmatic shades of meaning through various translation strategies. In our case, however, translators may neglect literal formalities. Our findings can be further utilized in teaching linguistic theory and practical linguistics as well as in courses on cultural studies.
Keywords: translation, methods of interpretation, romanticism translation theory, omission, external translation, internal translation, poetic translation.

Introduction

The academic foundations of translation theory have seen intensive development since the mid-20^th century [1]. It only now, however, that a lot more clarity has been achieved with regard translation as some co-creative activity. Intensive discussion has sprung among numerous scholars, translators, philosophers regarding different methods of interpretation. However, it became evident that linguistic methods have limited potential in translation studies [2; 3]. Translation was perceived as a specific type of linguistic activity that implied selection of linguistic units to formulate the target text depending on the goals pursued by the original [2]. Translation experts and language philosophers began to study the correlation between linguistic units in the original and the target translation [4; 5]. It was clear that such findings in translation theory and practice reveal new data of how to apply language as a tool for author-translator communication and, more importantly, intercultural communication [5; 6]. It became evident that the translation excellence depends on high competence in operating bilingual systemic structures, as well as profound understanding and comprehensive knowledge of the aesthetic theories of a particular historical time [5; 7]. The translation theory and contrastive grammar emphasize general and individual dimensions of human mentality, cultural and ethics priorities, that ensure accurate and comprehensive author – translator communication [5]. The main task for translators of contemporary texts is realistic communication and harmonized aesthetic attitudes, while functional potentials of linguistic grammar forms and categories, although identical, never entirely match across languages.

Materials and Methods

We apply the method of hermeneutics to detect and study the conceptual framework of various aesthetic theories with regard to translation practices. As an alternative to literal translation conveying the meaning expressed in the source text in a word-to-word manner, romantic and post-romantic translators rather suggested their own interpretations of the original. The more profound the communication, the greater is its reliance on semantics to create a new language. The sources were predominantly taken from philosophy and aesthetics works of the 19^th to 21^st centuries. The choice is explained by the fact that these authors are among the most frequently translated or recommended for translation. The selected authors most profoundly and elaborately reveal cultural realities, demonstrating their eloquent style in how they formulate conclusions and analyze extensive material.

Discussion

Interpretation of any text takes us half-way towards its translation, be it our attempt to describe a visual image, or to talk about musical sensations, or to convey the meaning of a poem. As communicators or mere interlocutors, unconsciously though, we create some common field that tunes us to each other, making us mimic one another and getting involved jointly with our fellows in a different framework of feelings, thus switching between languages. Some interpreters working from Asian into European languages admit that each translation is a variety of interpretation, rather than custom translation, because “the process of literary (poetic and prosaic written), as well as oral (consecutive and simultaneous) translation from Eastern languages has great features, not only technical, but also cultural, which make it significantly different from the process of translation from European languages” [8, p. 445]. Some poetry translators note that poetry is especially difficult to translate, predominantly due to fact that it is “crystallization of culture”, rather than due to its formal properties.

The more profound the communication, the greater is its reliance on semantics to create a new language. As noted E. Piotrovskaya notes, “there is, perhaps, not a single form of experience that would remain unmediated by translation – we adapt, interpret, modify” [9, p. 244]. Thus, we can conclude that any translation exists in plurality. By discerning between external translation (bilingual) and internal translation (monolingual interpretation within native language), the translator creates the poetic text as their ultimate target, considering that poetry initially deals with the utterly inexpressible. It is common knowledge that music is the best means of conveying “silence” and does not lend to description or translation into any other language.

Attempts to produce “descriptive” literary texts expressing the content of music were severely criticized by E. Ganslik, a music theory expert of the late 19^th century, in his treatise “On the Musically Beautiful” (1854). He also claimed that silence is the most expressive gesture in music. This idea is consonant with K. Malevich’s concept of supremacism and culminates in the artist’s painting “The Square” (1913) that exhausted the developmental potential of figurative painting. “The Square” is an equivalent of silence that offers the overarching interpretation in music.

Although staying within the framework of linguistics, we can assume that translation a lot more than languages crossing external boundaries; it is rather a mechanism that explores these boundaries within an apparently uniform framework. In addition to music, poetry offers another most vivid example in this respect. Nowadays semiotics is no longer able to cope with the variety of symbols and their interpretations. An image extends beyond its own self, producing a certain degree of redundancy, playfulness, “openness” that reveals the ultimate knowledge, strength and depth of feelings. Often poetic images are calling for translation, since they address the collective unconscious, yielding synesthesia and imprints of “traces” across historical times. Poetic speech absorbs the effective power of expressions or the non-linguistic dimension of language, according to the formalists’ observations. Poetic speech is yet another way to “get rid of the language”.

The success of translation is enshrined in the desire for translation. Such desire always presupposes a focus on the other person, which in itself provides a dialogue across feeling and their modalities. Paul Riker put it as linguistic hospitality as the ethics of translation. Philosophers, following Walter Benjamin, distinguish the untranslatable in translation – some solid impenetrable residue or a “blind spot” invisible to the author, rather than simply something that resists and escapes translation [10]. Maurice Blanchot refers to tension within the language itself, which requires clarification within a different language or an interpreter’s viewpoint. In a multilingual setting, such differences between verbal expressions generate tension, which translators pursue to resolve in their own way [11]. Translation itself is a creative transformation, an event or a meeting point.

If we refer to images we see that it is the affective content of collective and fundamentally historical experience that stays invisible and inexpressible and thus suffuses it. In order for the image to become visible, recognition is required offering a meeting place where affective generation-specific patterns exist with their emotionally colored sensuality. British theorist Raymond Williams wrote about the “structures of feeling” as about the ideology being lived, ideology in formation, as opposed to those values and norms that solidify and form the social superstructure. Certain image structures shed light on the present. This instant of suspended time requires the third party’s presence, i.e. a critical observer, or – a translator.

Eventually, translation remains a challenge to step up to. The untranslatable in translation means is a proclamation of practical ethics, which clearly contradicts prescriptive ethics of imperatives and norms. Any attempts to formulate a universal definition of the untranslatable require revision, since it is neither universal language structures discussed herein nor a missing source, but a continuum of defined universalities that never cease to change. Mono- or bilingual (external or internal) translation is related to the perception of visual images, rendering experience through unique and almost unreadable idioms, every instant bringing up a new variety of the untranslatable. It is a premise that accepts differences as given, whereas universality is subject to the principle of complementarity.

In terms of intercultural communication, translation of romantic poetry always entails an open transfer, a dialogue, a cross-subject action in intercultural space. Accordingly, what comes to our attention is the process of translation performed by the translator on their way across someone else’s cultural and linguistic space – in a traveler’s or a tourist’s manner, reminiscent of Childe Harold.

Translation can be perceived as a metaphor of cultural asceticism or creativity that denies whatever limits. (In fact, all poetry is translation in disguise. Translator’s personality is always haunted by the knowledge of imperfection, no matter how close it is to the original source. Translation is associated with an eternal feeling of mismatch perceived as a tantalizing gap which is largely concordant with Romanticist ideology of mismatches and suffering as a representation of life and spirituality in action. In this perspective translators are among the most blessed.

According to Friedrich Schlegel (“History of Romantic Literature”, 1803), “the purpose of literary translation is to unite the best properties of all cultures in the universal and cosmopolitan center of humanity – to the extent that this mission is shouldered by German culture, it has every reason to eventually become the voice and spiritual focus of the civilized world”. Here Friedrich Schlegel appreciates the specific flexibility of the German language enabling it to adapt to any foreign dialect in a cherishing manner.

In this idyllic context war is a romanticist metaphor where conquering other countries and spaces is gratified with the burden of poetic trophies. In romanticist narrative, translation of “the alien” is revelation of mastery, almost invariably subject to mystification and perceived as the sacred at a distant limit. At the same time, acquisition of the knowledge of “the others” is associated with self-denial, on the one hand, and conquest, on the other hand. Scholars assume that “ethnocentricity is opposed to universalism, which grants the language its vast ability of perception and limitless understanding as a preconception for the nation to be reborn into a cross-cultural spiritual empire. Considering the multiple dimensions of translation as a phenomenon, Johann Gottlieb Fichte distinguishes “mono- and polysemiotic texts. At the same time, the semiotic identity of the source and target texts allows to discern between intrasemiotic and intersemiotic types of translation (later giving rise to Jakobson’s intralingual and interlingual translation) [5].

Romanticism perceived the translator’s mission to be somewhat surrounded by a shimmering aureole: the translator is an honored enabler of culture, a servant of celestial powers beyond lay understanding. At the same time, national culture is aestheticized and cultivated as a challenge to overcome. This ideology was further followed by Nietzschean glorification of unrestrained creative energy as opposed to pedantic reproduction of antique junk, echoed by the idea of an artwork stripped of its own formalities (W. Benjamin) or the return to the truth as a transcendent source (M. Heidegger).

Presumably, the Romanticist understanding of translation retained its relevance in the 19^th and 20^th centuries due to the self-affirmative impression it offered to the cultural elite as a shelter from and a protest against social massification. The new value system correlates translation quality with accurate conformity to the original, as well as with adherence to the cultural creativity principle, which is averse to the idea of consumption. Thus, reader-and-text communication extends far beyond at the expense of an actively intervening translator. In Post-Modern and Post-Post-Modern era, such elitist attitudes to translation as an interpretation associated with augmented meanings is incompatible with meet Post-Romanticism aesthetics, where such controversies as “the own vs. the others”, “the sacred vs. the profane”, “the high and the low” have lost their relevance. Meanwhile, nowadays romantic philosophy of translation has still retained its relevant as interpretation of translators’ elective mission.

A most recent manifestation of Post-Romanticism trends in translation is observed in translation of Expressionist poetry where translator’s role is that of a protective authority to conduct super-strong sensations. The more sensitive and sensual the translator’s personality, the more information they are flawlessly able to convey. This is what every artist would strive for by exhausting themselves in all possible ways, fraught with self-destruction and derangement in their pursuit of the truth and an array of sensations they are committed to convey. Some unarticulated attraction makes us distinguish an artwork from simplistic craft products for sale. Some elusive fascination in translator’s personality enables them to re-embody and convey perceptions enshrined in the original source. It is apparently the elements of the incomplete and the void that drive beholders’ imagination compelling them to replenish the gaps with own perceptions and imagination.

Conclusion

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries translation theory extended its focus beyond exclusively linguistic aspects of the original text into the author-and-translator dialog which complements the original text with unexplored dimensions. Translation is no longer regarded as merely a formal technical process. It is rather a vitally essential activity within the framework of bilingual systems of signs and symbols.

The underlying Romanticism concepts regarding translation are elaborated in the paper and are conducive of the following conclusion:

1) texts unwaveringly belong to particular cultural contexts, which explains their disfunction once emerged within a different contextual space; it is therefore the translator who ensures adequate perception by a different social and cultural epoch for any such text;

2) different languages impose different associations and implications enshrined in respective cultures;

3) translation is impregnated with the risk of inaccurate transfer of inherent original emotions into the external target text environment, conducive of critical mismatches;

5) grammatical deviations incurred upon the author’s intention constitute most complicated patterns for translation. The translator is therefore compelled to transfer the conceptual and pragmatic meaning of the source text, producing their own interpretations. “Romaticism-based” translation is therefore recognized by its ability to transfer conceptual and pragmatic textual meaning, sacrificing literal formalities.

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