Translation Transformations in the English Translation of L. Kostenko’s Poetry

Abstract

The source language structure may turn out ambiguous or may depend on stylistic peculiarities and communicative intention of the author. In these cases deviation from structural norms of the source and target language poetry texts is based on the process of actualization, when it is necessary to emphasize the author’s views, ideas and reveal linguistic, cognitive, pragmatic, psychological, cross-cultural peculiarities of source and target poetry texts. The use of translation transformations while translating poetry is characterized by some specific features, as the form of any poem is made up of the rhythm, melody, compositional and emotional-expressive peculiarities. In poetic texts not only events, but aesthetic, moral, ideological and philosophic views of the author are reflected. We analyzed such translation transformations as addition, omission, substitution and permutation in English translations of L. Kostenko’s poetry. The most frequent were the following substitution types: substitution of parts speech and parts of sentences (functional) and substitution of sentence structure (partial or complete). We envisaged many cases of substituting verb for noun (verbal noun), adjectives for adverbs, nouns, verbs. Composite sentences were substituted for simple ones, clauses bound syndetically were substituted for asyndetic structures. Besides, types of subordination and coordination varied. The less frequent were addition and omission. Addition was used as adjustment technique to make some implicit information in the source text explicit in the target text involving the process of decoding and emphasizing some constituent parts. It helps to reveal some important elements which are present in the deep sentence structure of the source text. Omission of semantically redundant elements was the least in number in our research. In English translations of L. Kostenko’s poetry we analyzed cases of permutation within the structure of a simple sentence and changing the order of structural elements in the composite sentence. Permutation is more frequent in number than omission in our research.

Метою статті є дослідження перекладацьких трансформацій додавання, вилучення, субституції та пермутації в англомовних перекладах поезії Л. Костенко. Зроблено висновки про значимість їх використання перекладачем, причини вибору для досягнення функціональної еквівалентності тексту оригіналу та тексту перекладу у відповідності з соціально-культурними, ментальними, етно-психологічними особливостями народів різних країн.