Сравнительно-историческое, типологическое и сопоставительное языкознание | Филологический аспект №1 (21) Январь, 2017

The problems of translating of fictional language units and translating solutions (evidence from a novel «A Clockwork Orange» by Anthony Burgess)

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Богданова Анастасия Александровна

Bogdanova Anastasia Aleksandrovna
Togliatti State University, Russia, Togliatti

Abstract: The goal of the research in this article is to study the slang nadsat in a novel «A Clockwork Orange» by A. Burgess from the point of view of the possibility of translating into Russian language. The object of the research is the phenomenon of fictional language in terms of the slang nadsat in the novel «A Clockwork Orange» by A. Burgess. The subject of the research is the slang nadsat, its peculiarities and problems we can face while translating into Russian language. The theoretical material was investigated through definition analysis method and the method of analysis and synthesis. To define the textual language universals and author’s individualism peculiarities the comparative method was used. The relevancy of the article results from growing interest of linguists, philologists, literary scholars in the phenomenon of fictional languages. Moreover, fictional languages play a major role in the literary works and they also have a place in everyday language, making the influence upon the world culture.
Keywords: fictional language, literary text, literary translating, transformation

A translating of literary texts is the certain, unique kind of translating. Some specific traits of literary texts may cause the problems while translating these texts from one language into another. The lexical units with no direct equivalents in other languages (such as interlinguistic dissymmetry phenomenon, authorial neologisms, some fixed phrases, culture-specific words, slang and jargon expressions) are one of these specific traits. In a fiction book we sometimes can face such phenomenon as fictional language, which has been invented by the author of a book and which does not have an analogue in the real world.
One of the brightest examples of such fictional languages is a Russian language based slang nadsat, used as a XX century British teenagers’ slang in a novel «A Clockwork Orange» by Anthony Burgess. In this article such special linguistic phenomenon as fictional language was studied, the translating problems of this phenomenon and its role in fiction books were also analyzed, in terms of the slang of nadsat.

There is a lot of definitions of the term of literary translation but here the definition by Kazakova was used. She considers a literary translation to be a creative transformation of original, including all the expressiveness of the translating language, which might be accompanied by fuller transfer of original’s literary features. The most serious problem while translating of literary texts is the lexical units with no direct equivalents in other languages.
To translate these lexical units, specialists very often use such transformations as transcription, transliteration, calquing, notion explication, compensation, modulation. Sometimes the untranslatables in literary works are represented by the phenomenon of the artificial or fictional languages. One of the most interesting and unique examples of fictional languages in literature is the nadsat slang.

Nadsat is a fictional slang of British teenagers, which was described by Anthony Burgess in his dystopia «A Clockwork Orange». The slang is based on Russian language lexical units. It is mixture of written in Latin alphabet and sometimes deformed Russian words and of words of different  origin, for example, some borrowings from London cockney slang. As a result, the text of the novel is hard for perception and understanding of English speaking auditory.
A. Burgess has experimented with Russian words, having joined the morphological elements of English language. But in spite of the fact that this slang consists of Russian lexical units, translating into Russian language is the most difficult task. It is necessary to try to keep all the semantic peculiarities while translating, that is why it is not a right decision just to write the words in Cyrillic alphabet because it can lead to the loss of pragmatic function of the slang. Translators tried to find out a different way of information transfer.
There are some different variants of translation of the novel into Russian language but we will compare 2 most popular ones – the translations of Sinelschikov and Boshnyak.

And now we go ahead with an investigation of the most remarkable moments of translations. For example, the name of one of the novel characters is Dim. If to translate this word from English into Russian, we can see that one of the word meanings is «плохо соображающий, недалёкий». It must be said that this meaning characterizes the character perfectly («There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim being really dim.»). Russian translators demonstrated their adroitness to the best of their abilities. In the translation variant by Sinelschikov the name Dim was totally changed and turned into Кир or Кирилла–дебила (Это – я, Алекс, а вон те три ублюдка – мои фрэнды: Пит, Джорджи и Кир(Кирилла–дебила)). Boshnyak solved this problem in another way – he gave boy a new name, Тём («Тём был и в самомделе парень тёмный, в смысле glupyi.»). To avoid the loss of semantic meaning of the name, the translators had to use transformations (in this case it was modulation).
In the language, whose lexical meaning more than on half consists of Russian language based words, the author keeps the grammatical forms of English words and adds English suffixes to extraneous for English language roots. Thus, while creating the words plural forms, Burgess adds English ending  -s or -es to a base morpheme of Russian lexical item (There were three devotchkas sitting at the counter all together, but there were four of us malchicks and it was usually like one for all and all for one. – Около стойки на вращающихся стульчаках сидят три герлы, но нас четверо, а  закон  стаи суров:  ван фор  ол, и  все за  одного. (Е. Синельщиков)- За  стойкой  рядышком  сидели  три  kisy  (девчонки, значит),  но  нас, patsanov, было четверо, а у нас ведь как – либо одна на всех, либо по одной каждому. (В. Бошняк)). We can see that Sinelschicov uses such transformations as dropping (omission) and modulation (lexical substitution) and Boshnyak uses explication and also modulation.

1. Burgess creates the verb past tenses in the same way, combining the Russian word roots with English ending -ed, that define the verb past tense (He looked a malenky bit poogly when he viddied the four of us like that, coming up so quiet and polite and smiling, but he said: “Yes? What is it?” in a very loud teacher-type goloss, as if he was trying to show us he wasn’t poogly. – Очнувшись от своих умных мыслей, он пугливо луке эт ас четверых, тихих, вежливых, улыбающихся, и вопрошает 
громким учительским голосом: “Да? Что вы хотите?” И еще так нагло смотрит, будто вовсе не испугался. (Е. Синельщиков) – Глянул он на нас этак puglovato  — еще бы,  четверо таких ambalov, да еще  откуда  ни  возьмись,  да с ухмылочками, но  ничего, отвечает.  “Я  вас слушаю, – говорит,  –  в  чем  дело?  ”  – причем этак зычно, учительским тоном: пытается, значит, представить, будто он и не puglyi вовсе. (В. Бошняк). Here we can notice that Sinelschikov again uses lexical substitutions, which are represented by the transliterated into Cyrillic alphabet Russian lexical units. Unlike Sinelschikov, Boshnyak uses compensation and imparts the verb viddied as глянул, but then he compensates it, having translated the word combination the four of us like that as ambalov, strengthening the connotative meaning.

If to speak about our modern society we can notice, that as a result of globalization and mixing of English words with Russian ones, a new teenage slang in Russian language can be found, which is opposite to Burgess’ nadsat (апгрейдить, лайкнуть, погуглить, трэшовый, драйвовый, etc.).

It should be marked that while translating the slang of nadsat in most cases such transformation as modulation was used, then – compensation, transcription, transliteration, explication and calquing.

The translating of fictional words and word combinations we can find out in the novel by A. Burgess represents not only the translating of occasional words of foreign origin but the whole system of translating methods, which provide the reconstruction of original sense.

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