Section 1. Theoretical background of study

INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

Department

Of Applied Linguistics

COURSE PAPER IN THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TRANSLATION

TRANSLATION FEATURES OF ‘NADSAT’ LANGUAGE IN THE NOVEL “A CLOCKWORK ORANGE” BY ANTHONY BURGESS

Presented by:

the student of the group FL-44

Chovban M.V.

Supervised by:

The lecturer

Romanishin N.I.

Lviv 2016

THE CONTENT

INTRODUCTION

SECTION 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF STUDY

1.1 Etymology of translation

1.2. Theory of translation

1.3. The problems of equivalence in translation

SECTION 2.

2.1. What is the “nadsat” language by Anthony Burgess

2.2. The translation of the “nadsat” language into Russian by V. Boshniak and E.Sinelshikov

2.3. The translation of the “nadsat” language into Ukrainian by A.Butsenko

2.4. Analysis of the ways of translations of the novel “A clockwork orange” into Ukrainian and Russian

APPENDIX

CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. While interpreting—the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication between users of different languages—antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature. There exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2000 BCE) into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE.

Translators always risk inappropriate spill-over of source-language idiom andusage into the target-language translation. On the other hand, spill-overs have imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched the target languages. Indeed, translators have helped substantially to shape the languages into which they have translated.

Due to the demands of business documentation consequent to the Industrial Revolution that began in the mid-18th century, some translation specialties have become formalized, with dedicated schools and professional associations.

Because of the laboriousness of translation, since the 1940s engineers have sought to automate translation or to mechanically aid the human translator. The rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for translation services and has facilitated language localization.

Translation studies systematically study the theory and practice of translation.

The actuality of the course work is due to the general trend of contemporary Translation Studies research for multidimensional analysis of literary text. Also let’s note that in the Ukrainian studies the features of translation of individual style of E. Burgess are unknown.

The purpose of the course work is to analyze the strategies chosen by Ukrainian and Russian translators to play the artificial language "nadsat" in dystopian novel, "A clockwork Orange".

The object is a novel by Anthony Burgess "A clockwork Orange" and its same-named film adaptation by Stanley Kubrick.

The subject of study is the language translation features "nadsat" in Anthony Burgess's novel "A clockwork orange".

Research methods. Due to the purpose and objectives of the course work we used the method of comparing the translation with the original text. Because the study was conducted within the linguistic theory of translation, linguistics widely used methods: continuous sampling method (to create a corps of factual material); quantitative analysis of elements (for setting the frequency of certain structures in the TO and TP), contrastive method (to establish distinctive and common features in the system, normal and Usage of units English and Ukrainian languages), method of substitution.

Theoretical value is to study the characteristics of the translation of the novel, which is still not fully investigated by linguists and which has the differences in approaches to study it.

The practical significance of this work lies in the fact that it can be used to further a deeper study of the novel "A clockwork Orange" and its translation, especially, in the development of practical and theoretical materials for practice sessions with language translation.

SECTION 1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF STUDY

1.1 Etymology of translation

Starting with the fairly well-known roots of the English term, the word ‘translation’ comes from the Latin translatus, the past participle of the verb transferre. Meaning ‘ to carry across ’, this term is itself a translation from the Classical Greek metapherein (meta- [over, across] + pherein [to carry, bear]), from which we also get the term ‘ metaphor ‘.

For Chesterman, a Standard Average European ‘translation’ derived from these roots is therefore ‘etymologically a metaphor, whereby something is, in some sense, something that it literally is not.’

While these Latin/Greek roots are also shared by many modern usages of the term in Romance languages, these languages still display subtle departures from the connotations contained within the English ‘translation’.

The French term traduction, Spanish traducci ó n, Italian traduzione and others all come from the Latin transducere (trans [across] + ducere [to lead]) and therefore see us making the slight shift from ‘carrying across’ to ‘ leading across ‘ – something that will be discussed further below.

Elsewhere in Europe, despite the fact that many languages of the Germanic and Slavic branches simply calqued their terms for the concept of translation from the Latin/Greek model mentioned above, this process still allowed for several subtly different nuances to emerge as the word moved into new territories. The German übersetzen [literally: to set across] and Swedish översättning, for example, contain suggestions of ‘passing over’.

Beyond this pattern of calquing, meanwhile, the Dutch term vertaling is literally a ‘re-language-ing’, combining the prefix ver- [meaning a ‘change’ or ‘move’ or ‘re-‘ in English] and taal [language] while the Finnish käännös literally means ‘a turn, a turning’, noticeably deviating from the standard European trends.

For Chesterman, the Finnish term ‘highlights difference, a new direction, entering a new context; what is not highlighted is any sense of preserving an identity, maintaining sameness’.

Curiously, käännös also means ‘to steal’ in Finnish slang, adding yet another dimension to the many possible interpretations of what it means to translate.

Even further afield, the Mandarin Chinese word for ‘translate’ is yì or fānyi with the verb fan having the basic meaning ‘flutter’ – suggesting unstable movement and changes of state.

Finally, in an interesting example from Maurizio Bettini, Igbo – a language spoken in Nigeria – uses the words tapia and kowa to signify ‘translation’. Both words are made up of an element that means ‘ narrate ‘ or ‘ tell ‘ and another that means ‘ break, decompose ‘. For Bettini ‘[i]n native conception, translation thus consists in a practice that “breaks” a certain series of utterances and then “re-tells” them’.

Anyway, enough examples. According to Chesterman, these various etymologies suggest differences in the way that translation is perceived within those cultures and unmasks different approaches to the activity at hand.

Using three separate etymological sources (all included in the examples above – 1. The English term from Latin/Greek roots, 2. The German or Swedish calques and 3. The Romance language ‘leading across’) he explores the way in which the act of transferring the content to be translated (labelled X) is framed differently within each of these usages:

1. In English: ‘the underlying cognitive schema is of carrying X across; here, the agent is conceived of as moving over together with X, like a messenger. ’

2. In German and Swedish: ‘the agent stands on the source side, putting or setting X across; X is transferred in a direction away from the agent.’

3. In Romance languages: ‘the agent etymologically leads X across; this suggests that the agent moves in advance of X, and the direction of movement is thus towards the agent.’

Despite conceding that more work is required in the area, Chesterman finishes by hesitantly suggesting that these different paths indicate that perhaps there is no universal conception of translation:

‘At the very least, the present preliminary study illustrates how the notion of translation has been interpreted in different ways in a number of different languages. It shows that not all these interpretations give the same priority to the preservation of sameness which characterizes the words denoting “translation” in many modern Indo-European languages.’

However, while these etymologies and developing meanings are fascinating, any implication that the roots of a word delimit the extent of our understanding of its significance in any way is an obvious oversimplification.

The English notion of translation is not tied to a rudimentary idea of ‘carrying across’ but rather entails everything that translation has come to stand for in the ensuing centuries.

Though the Latin origins of the modern English word perhaps demonstrate how translation was once viewed, our current understanding encompasses nearly all of the various meanings borne out of other languages’ etymologies of translation.

In other words, no matter what path we have taken to reach our current understanding of the term, translation/traduction/übersetzen etc. cannot be reduced to historical appraisals of what they once signified. For me, translation is not about ‘carrying across’, ‘leading across’ or whatever else, but rather all of these and so much more. This is the ‘universal translation’ of today.

Indeed, in my opinion, the ‘universal translation’ is best seen when we consider the many metaphors that exist for the activity, something I’ve explored previously on this blog, as these demonstrate the multiple interpretations in action.

In English alone we see translation as transformation, building, turning, conquering, theft, cannibalism and so much more beyond the conception its etymological roots initially provided.