One of the key issues in recently exposition theories has been on whether transmutation should domesticate or foreignize the line of descent textbookbookual amourual matter. Venuti (1995) defines domesticating version as a re homement of the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text with a text that is intelligible to the orient wrangle reader. Foreignizing reading is delineate as a translation that indicates the linguistic and cultural differences of the text by disrupting the cultural codes that prevail in the pit language. Other scholars, identical Tymoczko (1999), criticise this dichotomy by staining away that a translation may be radically oriented to the source text in some respects, but depart radically from the source text in other respects, thus denying the exisdecadece of the private polarity that describes the orientation of a translation.
I have chosen five incline translations of Lev Tolstoy?s Anna K benina for my paper. Dole (1886),Garnett (1901), Maude (1918), Edmonds (1954) and Pevear and Volokhonsky (2000).
My main design has been to analyse the relationship amongst earlier and latertranslations. Since modern incline language readers are more(prenominal) familiar with Russianlanguage, literature and polish as well as with Tolstoy?s working than the nineteenth hundredreaders were, theoretically speaking, translating Tolstoy in 2000 should be easier than itwas in 1886. In frankness each translator still had to choose between the adequatere vexation of Tolstoy?s text and the acceptability of their translation for theircontemporary incline speaking consultations (the wrong described in Toury 1995) on asliding scale between audience and text. In a way, with the higher development of the artand scholarship of translation, the expectations of readers and critics grow, and adequaterepresentation of a text in a different language becomes more challenging. My hypothesisis that literary translation evolves as an exploration of deeper and deeper layers of thesource text. In the present thesis I try to show how the tarradiddle of translation of AnnaKarenina into English reflects these different stages of evolution.
One of the key issues in the recent translation theories has been on whether thetranslator should remain invisible. The margin invisibility describes the tip to which certain(prenominal) translation traditions tolerate the presence (i.e. intrusion, intervention) of thetranslator in the translation (Hatim 2001, 45). This term originated in the works ofLawrence Venuti, himself a literary translator since the late 1970s. Venuti suggests that?invisibility? reveals itself in devil related phenomena:The ? put of parley?, that is, the translator?s use of language.
In this paper I am going to explore the relationship between foreignization anddomestication in translations of Anna Karenina into English. Henry Gifford points come out of the closet that ?Tolstoy?s readers in the English language are not greatly outnumbered by those who read him in Russian? (Gifford 1978, 17). there have been at least ten translations of AnnaKarenina into English, covering over a century of the history of literary translation.
Gifford points out that with so many readers depending on the English translation for their companionship of a very important writer, the question of how to buy the farm his effect is quite as central nowadays as that of how to represent Homer was for Matthew Arnold when he wrote his famous essay On Translating Homer (Ibid. 17.) It is therefore worth trying to establish certain parallels between successive translations of classic authors and successive translations of Russian classics.
Venuti describes the history of translation theory as a set of ever-changing relationships between the translator?s actions and the concepts of equivalence and function. Equivalence is defined as a ? variable notion ? of the connection between the original text and its translation and function is ?a variable notion? of how the sympathised text is connected to the receiving language and culture.
(Venuti 2000b, 5).
A diachronic study of translation history undoubtedly requires a stream classification. George Steiner (1975) believes that the full history of translation theory could be split up into four periods. The founder of the translation theory as a specific was a French humanist Etienne Dolet, who was strangled and burned-out with his books, for adding the phrase rien du tout in Plato?s passage around what existed after death, which implied doubts round immortality.
The translator must fully agnise the sense and meaning of the original author,although he is at indecorum to clarify obscurities. The translator should have a perfect intimacy of both source language and tar relieve oneself language. The translator should eliminate the tendency to translate sacred scripture-for-word makes. The translator should use forms of row in common use.
The translator should choose and order haggle appropriately to get the correct tone (Cit. Bassnett 1980, p.54). Dolet?s principles are imbibely domesticating, already in the get-go principle he gives translators the liberty to clarify obscurities in the original and make their texts clear for common readers.
Gifford refers to Tolstoy?s repetitions as links in the system of linkings and points out that since the mountain chain is no stronger than its weakest link, the blurring of episodes will diminish the effect of the whole novel. By that he means that ?when Tolstoy?s moral style is so spare, reduced to the bedrock essentials, something of the novel?s steady, stock-still obsessive preoccupation is lost should the translator retreat heretofore slightly from singleness of meaning? (Gifford 1978, 26-27).
If a translator sees repetitions as redundant, domesticating strategy will be toreduce the number of repetitions ?for the sake of a facile elegance? (Matlaw 1976, 736),which can result in a leveling of narrative style. Foreignizing strategy will preserve therepetitions and produce a possibly less elegant language text. As May (1994, 59) pointsout, translators sometimes work to reflect peculiarities of certain characters? legal transfer intheir English prose, since those peculiarities contribute to the readers? understanding of the character; but when the individualities of oral communication do not belong to a character, when they are fling a generalised sense of the narrating voice, then they often fade altogether in translation. Because of this kind of ?correction?, readers of Tolstoy?s works in English are less likely to advise the significant role repetition plays in Tolstoy?s make-up (Sankovitch)A few examples of different translations:??However, I don?t entertain with you,?? express the voice.? (Dole, 70)?? all in all the equivalent I don?t agree with you,? said the lady?s voice.? (Garnett, 69)??All the same I don?t agree with you,? the lady was saying.? (Maude, v.1,69)??All the same I don?t agree with you,? said the lady?s voice.? (Edmonds,75)??I still don?t agree with you,? the lady?s voice said.? (Pevear, 62)In example a) the social organisation is changed in Garnett?s translation where shechanges the narrative focus from grass to Dolly and therefore makes the reader focus onDolly?s happenings for womb-to-tomb than Tolstoy?s reader does. Dole changes the construction inexample b) to Levin?s point of view and therefore misses the moment where peck seesLevin and includes him in her intimate life ? to which a minute before that he was stranger.
besides Dole and Pevear keep Tolstoy?s construction intact in example c). When Maudechanges ?said Kitty?s voice? for ?asked Kitty?, he destroys the narrative effect that showsLevin so absorbed in his thoughts that he does not notice Kitty at the furnish until shestarts speaking to him. Similarly, in example d) Maude does not preserve the effect ofVronsky hearing Anna?s voice but not macrocosm able to see her. He consistently changes theconstruction in these two sentences, not attempting equivalence with Tolstoy?s style.
In a target language oriented translation adapting the text to the moral norms of the target culture could either involvem expurgation or, in a freer society, over-clarification, i.e. rendering clear what was meant to be slightly disguised in the original. In a source language oriented translation the text is neither bowdlerised nor over-clarified.
Venuti shows that translator?s refusal to bowdlerise a text is a way of opposingdomesticating tendencies within the target culture. He does so, development the example of JohnNott, who in the 18th century refused to omit definitive cozy references in Catullus?spoetry, explaining that(?) when an ancient classic is translated, and explained, the work may be considered as transforming a link in the chain of history: history should not be falsified, we ought therefore to translate him fairly; and when he gives us the manners of his own day, provided disgusting to our sensations, and repugnant to our natures they may sometimes shew, we must not endeavour to conceal, or gloss them over. (Cit. Venuti 1994, 85)There are several shipway in which translators can bowdlerise a text: omittingreferences to sexual relations is by far the most common. Other shipway include using a more neutral word (a euphemism) or replacing the original references to sexual relations with those grateful within the target culture. For instance, Walter Kelly commented in 1861 that when translating Tibullus?s elegy about homosexual love, he had been ?compelled to be unfaithful to the original with envision to gender? (Mason 2000, 515).
One example of blue(a) Puritanism, noted by Nabokov, has already been cited inthe first chapter. When, in Dole?s translation, Vronsky asks Anna what is the matter withher, Anna responds in Russian: Ya beremenna! (Dole, 200), ?all because the translatorthought that ?I am significant? might shock some pure soul?.
(Nabokov 1981, 316) In theend of Dole?s translation, in the glossary of Russian language and phrases ?Ya beremenna? is translated as ?I am expecting my confinement?.
When Anna Karenina was first print in America, an anonymous critic wrotein Literary World: ? (?) on these relations of the sexes, on the facts of parentage andmotherhood, the book speaks with a drabness of meaning, sometimes with a plainness ofwords, which is at least new.? (Cit. Knowles 1978, 341) There are other omissions Dolemakes in order to adapt Tolstoy?s ?plainness of words? to the moral norms of the Victorian society. For instance, when Anna becomes Vronsky?s mistress, she starts beholding a recurrent nightmare that both Vronsky and Karenin are her husbands.
Garnett translated Anna Karenina fifteen years later than Dole, and during thosefifteen years Tolstoy?s popularity in the communicatory world had grown sufficiently tomend the ?Puritan taste? in translation (see chapter 2). Garnett was English, and, unlike the United States, England had its own 19th century strong tradition of the realistic novel,whilst American realism of the eighties was ?mostly aloof from the homely and painfulrealities of life? (Ahnebrink 1961, 19). Also, being a woman with liberated attitudes torelationships and a mother herself, Garnett did not feel a need to omit the themes of sexual relationships and pregnancy. She, overly, had some Victorian prudishness about language (see May 1994, 39), but examples of expurgation in her translation of Anna Karenina are rare. For example, in the sentence already quoted in chapter 3, in Garnett?s translation, the nurse covers her middle (Garnett, 477), which is by all odds an advance from Dole?s translation, where she just fastens her dress (Dole, 429). The bosom becomes ?welldeveloped breast? in Maude?s translation and then ? heroic breast? in Edmonds? translation, as Tolstoy originally intended.
As suggested above, adapting the text to the moral norms within the target culturemay mean expurgation or, in a freer society, it can involve over-over-clarification, i.e. rendering clear what was not meant to be absolutely clear in the original.
Introducing Tolstoy?s novels to English readers, Maude wrote:The dignity of man is hidden from us either by all kinds of defects or by the factthat we esteem other qualities too highly and therefore measure men by their cleverness,strength, beauty, and so forth. Tolstoy teaches us to penetrate beneath their externality.
(Maude 1929, 429)English translators have generally managed to revivify Tolstoy?s lyrical lines. Forinstance, below is Garnett?s translation of the first passage, quoted in 4.12:She did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs wasno monthlong audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogsshowed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was theempty field all round, the village in front and he himself free and apartfrom it all, wandering lonely along the deserted high-road. (Garnett, 314-315.)The least lyrical is the Maude translation of the same paragraph:She did not look out again. The sound of the wheels could no longerbe heard; the tinkling of the bells grew fainter. The barking of dogs provedthat the coach was transient through the village, and only the empty fields,the village before him, and he himself walking solitary on the desertedroad, were left. (Maude v.1, 315) I believe, the lack of lyricism in this translation is mainly due to two facts:Maude changes Tolstoy?s syntactic construction, putting the verb ?left? in the end of the final stage sentence and he leaves out the group of words formation Levin?s emotionalstate: ?isolated and apart from it all?. The word ?prove? also sounds unnecessarilyscientific in this context.
Anna Karenina is, of course, written in prose, and therefore a detailed essay ontranslating poetry would be out of place here. When the characters of Anna Kareninaoccasionally quote poetry lines, it becomes more of a problem of literary allusions andliteral quotations. The poetry lines they quote become part of their voice, and they reflecttheir background, tastes, etc. As Christian (1978, 5) comments, many translators, even ifthey know both English and Russian fluently, have lacked a proper background knowledge of Russian literature and history. He therefore suggests that the best English translations of Russian fiction are being done by professors and lecturers in British and American universities.
Bibliography:Aaltonen, Sirkku (2000.) /Time-sharing On Stage/ Clevedon: polyglot matters.
Abdulla, Adnan (1992.) Translation of Style/ /In Robert de Beaugrande, Language, Discourse andTranslation in the western and Middle East. Amsterdam, John Benjamins publishing company: 65-72.
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