Subject
Fw Russian ADA translations--continued
From
Date
Body
EDNOTE. Ljuba Tarvi (Helsinki) is a specialist in translation who has
devoted several years to examining English translations of Pushkin's _Eugene
Onegin_. Below she applies her expertise to the four samples of ADA
translated into Russian. NABOKVpL thanks her for her participation.
-------------------------------------------------
Dear List!
In the first excerpt of ADA compared, V. Nabokov seems to speak of Terra as
a place with mixed time. Indeed, the notion of Terra is identified with
“another world” equated with “the Other World” (the past?), which is said to
be “confused” with “the Next World” (the future?) and “the Real World” (the
present?). Therefore, if I’m correctly interpreting the text, we seem to
deal here with three types of worlds and three simultaneous time layers,
translated in the following way:
V.N. another world = this “Other World” the “Next
World” the Real World
O.K.-1 другой мир “Иной мир” “Грядущий
мир” реальный Мир
O.K.-2 другой мир “иной мир” “мир
иной” сущий мир
S.I. мир иной “иной мир”
“потусторонний мир” мир существенный
A.S. другой мир “Иной мир” “Tот
свет” Действительный Мир
The translators seem to be unanimous and close in rendering the past,
unanimous and diverse in rendering the present, while “the Next World” of
the future has been retained only by O. Kirichenko., and only in her earlier
version.
I have compared the translations of the first excerpt using the Token
Equivalence Method (TEM) I developed for my thesis “Eugene Onegin by
Alexander Pushkin in English: A Comparative Linguistic Profile of its
Nineteen Translations.” This quantitative method allows one to compare
translated text in terms of the retained semantic (Token Frame, TF),
morphological (Morphological Frame, MF) and syntactic (Syntactic Frame, SF)
features of the original. In the table featuring these frames below, I have
also calculated, for convenience, the arithmetic means of these frames, (∑),
as well as indicated the number of “paddings,” or what V. Nabokov used to
call «отсебятина», referred here to as excessive target tokens, (ET). My
calculations are based on the number of words (source tokens) in the
original excerpt (168):
TF MF
SF ∑ ET
V.N. 100% (168) 100% (168)
100% (168) 100% 0
O.K. (1995) 80% (135) 41% (70) 29% (49) 50%
20
O.K. (2000) 77% (130) 43% (73) 32% (55) 50%
19
S.I. (1999) 80% (136) 54% (91) 38% (65) 57%
19
A.S. (unpbl.) 81% (137) 65% (110) 52%
(88) 66% 8
For comparison, V. Nabokov’s score for One:XX in “Eugene Onegin” is as
follows:
TF MF
SF ∑ ET
100% 98%
85% 94% 0
The result scored by A. Sklyarenko outbeats his adversaries (or shall I say
co-workers?) in almost all aspects of my formal analysis. While semantically
he seems to be practically at the same level as the others, morphologically
and syntactically he has been much more faithful to the original. Besides,
he has added only 8 extra tokens, a modest figure as compared with the other
results in this frame.
Within my method, O. Kirichenko’s score seems to be somewhat inferior to
those achieved by the others. Moreover, her revision has not changed her
general score, 50%. Nonetheless, it is her versions that mostly correspond
to the healthy lexical suggestions made by our respected Dmitry Nabokov: she
used нездоровый for “sick”, Нововеры for “New Believers” (though without
quotation marks), космический for “cosmic,” and подходящий for “sufficient.”
Good luck to all those translating and assessing translations.
Ljúba Tárvi
Helsinki University
--------------------------------------
English Translations of Pushkin's _Eugene Onegin_
When comparing 19 full translations of “Eugene Onegin,” I clearly saw that
at least three of them were below any criticism. But I included them into my
analysis for two reasons: because without them the picture would have been
incomplete and because they also contained some unique linguistic solutions.
My general approach ties well with the type of pluralism suggested by
Richard Rorty in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, “a utopia of
liberal ironies”, where “irony” denotes no priority of one’s personal
position, “liberal” implies no cruelty in treating the views of one’s
opponents, and “utopia” is self-evident.
devoted several years to examining English translations of Pushkin's _Eugene
Onegin_. Below she applies her expertise to the four samples of ADA
translated into Russian. NABOKVpL thanks her for her participation.
-------------------------------------------------
Dear List!
In the first excerpt of ADA compared, V. Nabokov seems to speak of Terra as
a place with mixed time. Indeed, the notion of Terra is identified with
“another world” equated with “the Other World” (the past?), which is said to
be “confused” with “the Next World” (the future?) and “the Real World” (the
present?). Therefore, if I’m correctly interpreting the text, we seem to
deal here with three types of worlds and three simultaneous time layers,
translated in the following way:
V.N. another world = this “Other World” the “Next
World” the Real World
O.K.-1 другой мир “Иной мир” “Грядущий
мир” реальный Мир
O.K.-2 другой мир “иной мир” “мир
иной” сущий мир
S.I. мир иной “иной мир”
“потусторонний мир” мир существенный
A.S. другой мир “Иной мир” “Tот
свет” Действительный Мир
The translators seem to be unanimous and close in rendering the past,
unanimous and diverse in rendering the present, while “the Next World” of
the future has been retained only by O. Kirichenko., and only in her earlier
version.
I have compared the translations of the first excerpt using the Token
Equivalence Method (TEM) I developed for my thesis “Eugene Onegin by
Alexander Pushkin in English: A Comparative Linguistic Profile of its
Nineteen Translations.” This quantitative method allows one to compare
translated text in terms of the retained semantic (Token Frame, TF),
morphological (Morphological Frame, MF) and syntactic (Syntactic Frame, SF)
features of the original. In the table featuring these frames below, I have
also calculated, for convenience, the arithmetic means of these frames, (∑),
as well as indicated the number of “paddings,” or what V. Nabokov used to
call «отсебятина», referred here to as excessive target tokens, (ET). My
calculations are based on the number of words (source tokens) in the
original excerpt (168):
TF MF
SF ∑ ET
V.N. 100% (168) 100% (168)
100% (168) 100% 0
O.K. (1995) 80% (135) 41% (70) 29% (49) 50%
20
O.K. (2000) 77% (130) 43% (73) 32% (55) 50%
19
S.I. (1999) 80% (136) 54% (91) 38% (65) 57%
19
A.S. (unpbl.) 81% (137) 65% (110) 52%
(88) 66% 8
For comparison, V. Nabokov’s score for One:XX in “Eugene Onegin” is as
follows:
TF MF
SF ∑ ET
100% 98%
85% 94% 0
The result scored by A. Sklyarenko outbeats his adversaries (or shall I say
co-workers?) in almost all aspects of my formal analysis. While semantically
he seems to be practically at the same level as the others, morphologically
and syntactically he has been much more faithful to the original. Besides,
he has added only 8 extra tokens, a modest figure as compared with the other
results in this frame.
Within my method, O. Kirichenko’s score seems to be somewhat inferior to
those achieved by the others. Moreover, her revision has not changed her
general score, 50%. Nonetheless, it is her versions that mostly correspond
to the healthy lexical suggestions made by our respected Dmitry Nabokov: she
used нездоровый for “sick”, Нововеры for “New Believers” (though without
quotation marks), космический for “cosmic,” and подходящий for “sufficient.”
Good luck to all those translating and assessing translations.
Ljúba Tárvi
Helsinki University
--------------------------------------
English Translations of Pushkin's _Eugene Onegin_
When comparing 19 full translations of “Eugene Onegin,” I clearly saw that
at least three of them were below any criticism. But I included them into my
analysis for two reasons: because without them the picture would have been
incomplete and because they also contained some unique linguistic solutions.
My general approach ties well with the type of pluralism suggested by
Richard Rorty in his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, “a utopia of
liberal ironies”, where “irony” denotes no priority of one’s personal
position, “liberal” implies no cruelty in treating the views of one’s
opponents, and “utopia” is self-evident.