Урок двадцать четвёртый

В некоторых ситуациях переводчику приходится не выражать смысл текста полностью собственными средствами, а частично брать уже готовые переводы. Например, когда британский журналист на английском цитирует речь российского политика, сказанную по-русски, то переводчику следует во избежание искажений смысла не переводить обратно цитату, а отыскать оригинал этой речи политика и взять отрывок оттуда. Это было бы наилучшим решением, которое, впрочем, не всегда возможно.

В рамках данного урока мы продолжим работу по оттачиванию средств переформулирования смысла текста.

Упражнение 1. Переведите текст, тщательно подбирая каждое слово к контексту, стилю и прагматике текста.

Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?

By David Denby

Many people would say that Dostoevsky’s short novel “Notes from Underground” marks the beginning of the modernist movement in literature. (Other candidates: Diderot’s “Rameau’s Nephew,” written in the seventeen-sixties but not widely read until the eighteen-twenties, and, of course, Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary,” from 1856.) Certainly, Nietzsche’s writings, Freud’s theory of neurosis, Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” Bellow’s “Herzog,” Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint,” perhaps Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver,” and half of Woody Allen’s work wouldn’t have been the same without the existence of this ornery, unstable, unmanageable text – the fictional confession of a spiteful modern Hamlet, an inhabitant of St. Petersburg, “that most abstract and pre-meditated city,” and a man unable to act and also unable to stop humiliating himself and embarrassing others. A self-regarding, truculent, miserable, paralyzed man. As I began reading “Notes” again recently (in Andrew R. MacAndrew’s translation for Signet Classics), I wondered if it had been overwhelmed by the books and movies that it has influenced. I wondered if “Notes” would seem like a dim echo, whether it still had the shock value that I remember from long ago.

The text itself purports to be the writings of a retired mid-level government bureaucrat. A family bequest has allowed him to quit his job, which he hated, and he is now forty, living with a servant whom he despises in what he calls “a mousehole.” In an introductory note, Dostoevsky explains that both the character and his “notes” are fictional, but that he represents a certain Russian type the public needs to know about. The underground man (the title, in Russian, literally means “notes from under the floorboards”) addresses an imaginary audience whom he refers to as “you” or “ladies and gentlemen” – presumably a representative group of educated, Westernized Russians. He alternately teases, insults, and abases himself before them. They are people besotted, he believes, with Western ideas of progress – the ideologies of utilitarianism, socialism, evolution, the greatest good for the greatest number, and so on. They are also enamored of German idealism – “the good and the beautiful” of Schiller’s rhapsodic writing. Is the underground man Dostoevsky himself? No, but he spouts many of Dostoevsky’s ideas and antipathies; the book is certainly an appropriate introduction to Dostoevsky the Slavophile reactionary who emerged in his final years.

But “Notes” is a canny work of literature, not a tract: Dostoevsky may have put his own ideas into the mouth of a brilliant man, but he undermined him as a self-destructive mess at the same time. The text, as academics might say, is multivalent, at odds with itself. It’s not so much that the underground man’s opinions are wrong – surely Dostoevsky thought that many of them were true, however wildly phrased – but that they were inseparable, like all opinion, from personal strengths and weakness, even personal pathology. We are inevitably subjective and self-justifying – that is one of the modern elements in the book. We are also entirely inconsistent. The underground man taunts his listeners, apologizes, criticizes himself, then gets aggressive, then collapses again. On and on. He pulls the rug out from underneath his own feet; he realizes he’s trapped in the prison of his own character. Hell is myself. No one would put up with this guy in his home for more than a half hour. He’s only possible – entertaining, funny, nasty – on the page.

The modern element in “Notes from Underground” is Dostoevsky’s exultation in human perversity. You can read this book as a meta-fiction about creating a voice, or as a case study, but you can’t escape reading it also as an accusation of human insufficiency rendered without the slightest trace of self-righteousness. If you begin by grieving for its hero, he upsets you with so much truth of our common nature that you wind up grieving for yourself – for your own insufficiency. “Notes” is still a modern book; it still can kick.

Задания

1. Проанализируйте и сравните несколько вариантов перевода. В каких из них средства перевода подобраны наилучшим образом?

2. Приходилось ли вам при переводе тех или иных элементов текста обращаться к первоисточнику – книге Ф.М. Достоевского?

Упражнение 2. Переведите текст, тщательно подбирая каждое слово к контексту, стилю и прагматике текста.

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be

By Ryan Bloom

For the modern American reader, few lines in French literature are as famous as the opening of Albert Camus’s “L’Étranger”: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.” Nitty-gritty tense issues aside, the first sentence of “The Stranger” is so elementary that even a schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong?

Stuart Gilbert, a British scholar and a friend of James Joyce, was the first person to attempt Camus’s “L’Étranger” in English. In 1946, Gilbert translated the book’s title as “The Outsider” and rendered the first line as “Mother died today.” Simple, succinct, and incorrect.

In 1982, both Joseph Laredo and Kate Griffith produced new translations of “L’Étranger,” each opting for Gilbert’s revised title, “The Stranger,” but preserving his first line. “Mother died today” remained, and it wasn’t until 1988 that the line saw a single word changed. It was then that American translator and poet Matthew Ward reverted “Mother” back to Maman. One word? What’s the big deal? A large part of how we view and – alongside the novel’s court—ultimately judge Meursault lies in our perception of his relationship with his mother. We condemn or set him free based not on the crime he commits but on our assessment of him as a person. Does he love his mother? Or is he cold toward her, uncaring, even?

First impressions matter, and, for forty-two years, the way that American readers were introduced to Meursault was through the detached formality of his statement: “Mother died today.” There is little warmth, little bond or closeness or love in “Mother,” which is a static, archetypal term, not the sort of thing we use for a living, breathing being with whom we have close relations. To do so would be like calling the family dog “Dog” or a husband “Husband.” The word forces us to see Meursault as distant from the woman who bore him.

What if the opening line had read, “Mommy died today”? How would we have seen Meursault then? Likely, our first impression would have been of a child speaking. Rather than being put off, we would have felt pity or sympathy. But this, too, would have presented an inaccurate view of Meursault. The truth is that neither of these translations – “Mother” or “Mommy” – ring true to the original. The French word maman hangs somewhere between the two extremes: it’s neither the cold and distant “mother” nor the overly childlike “mommy.” In English, “mom” might seem the closest fit for Camus’s sentence, but there’s still something off-putting and abrupt about the single-syllable word; the two-syllable maman has a touch of softness and warmth that is lost with “mom.”

So how is the English-language translator to avoid unnecessarily influencing the reader? It seems that Matthew Ward, the novel’s most recent translator, did the only logical thing: nothing. He left Camus’s word untouched, rendering the famous first line, “Maman died today.” It could be said that Ward introduces a new problem: now, right from the start, the American reader is faced with a foreign term, with a confusion not previously present. Ward’s translation is clever, though, and three reasons demonstrate why his is the best solution.

So if Matthew Ward finally corrected the mother problem, what exactly has he, and the other translators, gotten wrong? Writing of “The Stranger” ’s first line in the Guardian, Guy Dammann says, “Some openers are so prescient that they seem to burn a hole through the rest of the book, the semantic resonance recurring with the persistence of the first theme in Beethoven’s fifth symphony.”

The linguistic fluency of any good translator tells them that, syntactically, “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte,” is not the most fluid English sentence. So rather than the more literal translation, “Today, Mother has died,” we get, “Mother died today,” which is the smoother, more natural rendering. But the question is: In changing the sentence’s syntax, are we also changing its logic, its “mystical” deeper meaning?

The answer is a resounding oui!

Rendering the line as “Mother died today” completely neglects a specific ordering of ideas that offer insight into Meursault’s inner psyche. Throughout the course of the novel, the reader comes to see that Meursault is a character who, first and foremost, lives for the moment. He does not consciously dwell on the past; he does not worry about the future. What matters is today. The single most important factor of his being is right now.

The ordering of words in Camus’s first sentence is no accident: today is interrupted by Maman’s death. The sentence, the one we have yet to see correctly rendered in an English translation of “L’Étranger,” should read: “Today, Maman died.”

Задания

1. Проанализируйте и сравните несколько вариантов перевода. В каких из них средства перевода подобраны наилучшим образом?

2. Приходилось ли вам при переводе тех или иных элементов текста обращаться к книге А. Камю в её русском переводе?

Коль скоро высказывание может выражать не одно действие, а несколько (высказывание может быть полипредикативным), то действия эти (включая сюда, разумеется, состояние, явления и т.п.) в рамках высказывания получают некоторое временнóе соотношение. То есть эти действия могут быть слиты воедино (он вошёл, глядя на меня) или разделены, хотя будут относиться к одному временному промежутку (он вошёл и посмотрел на меня). В первом случая одно действие выступает как бы фоном для другого; такие же отношения имеют место и в рамках нескольких высказываний, но всякий раз эти действия относятся к одному периоду времени. Речь идёт, не о реальных действиях в мире, а об их представленности в языковых элементах высказывания [ТФГ 2011: 235–236].

Такие отношения выделяются в особую семантико-синтаксическую категорию – таксис, средства выражения которой не ограничиваются только, скажем, сложноподчинёнными конструкциями или конструкциями с причастием и деепричастием. Подумайте, какие ещё средства используются для выражения таксиса в русском языке и какие средства английского языка могут им соответствовать.

Таксис как соотношение нескольких действий никогда не существует отдельно, он всегда выражается совместно с другими семантическими категориями, составляя с ними смысл высказывания: с модальностью, условием, уступкой и т.п.

Упражнение 3. Выполните устный последовательный перевод или перевод с листа данных отрывков. Обратите внимание на то, какими средствами выражаются таксисные отношения при их наличии в высказываниях. Сравните несколько вариантов перевода.

(1) – Господи, ну как можно быть такой безмозглой! – в сердцах воскликнул Павел, – Ты и дня не протянешь без его помощи! – Но в то же время Павел почувствовал себя виноватым и через минуту попросил прощения за свои слова.

(2) Наша делегация направилась в Нью-Йорк на встречу с партнёрами, поставив перед собой цель продлить контракт на более выгодных для нас условиях, и твоя задача – не дать этой сделке сорваться.

(3) He wanted to convince everyone that he is right and only his opinion has the right to exist. That was completely out of the blue, she started to cry, to shout, and to blame him in all deathful sins. Later, he would understand – she acted on the spur of the moment, but it would be later… now let’s come back to that sunny winter morning on the 21 of February. “I never could understand her” – he concluded, but at the same time he felt guilty and offered an apology for his words.

(4) Он рассказал мне все детали, добавив, что потому торопился со мной связаться, чтобы предупредить об изменении даты командировки. Я понимал, что это очень серьёзная сделка, и чтобы всё прошло, как по маслу, нужно приложить немало усилий и прекрасно разбираться в данной сфере. Я внимательно выслушал его и теперь знаю, как вести себя на этой встрече.

(5) Меня удивили её выводы, я ей возражала – сказала, что совсем не разделяю её мнения. На что она никак не отреагировала, продолжала и дальше отстаивать свою точку зрения, говорить на повышенных тонах, и в конце концов не приняла никаких возражений и не ответила толком на вопросы.

(6) For his 12-hour shift he earns about $4, but even this tiny income is desperately needed. His father was killed when a bomb hit their house in Homs, leaving his mother paralyzed. His 15-year-old sister has been married off to a 50-year-old Syrian man, because his mother thinks this is the best chance she has of a normal life.

(7) Our delegation went to New York for meeting with our partners, setting a goal of enlarging our contract on more convenient conditions for us. At the very beginning I had a jaundiced view about this meeting, but still agreed to go. During the meeting, my boss said that our salaries are quite high and it would be absolutely comfortable for us to work with them for an idea, so to say. My boss always seems to be moving the goalposts, which makes it very difficult to know what he really wants.

(8) I once had a boss who was independently rich, and when I asked him for a raise, he turned me down, adding that he, too, had forsaken a raise that year. A surge of anger, resentment and sheer hatred welled up in me, and were it not that I needed the job, I would have gone for his throat. His unthinking and unthinkable attempt to make common cause with me brought to mind Anatole France’s observation that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

(9) Mindfulness meditation, the ancient and flourishing practice that increases awareness of random thoughts and redirects attention to the present moment, has been used to manage stress, depression and even chronic pain. Researchers in the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who have been studying the relationship between mindfulness and the tendency to let our minds drift away on “task-unrelated thoughts,” sought to find out. The higher the working memory, or an individual’s ability to keep in mind chunks of information and also use them, the better students tend to perform on reading comprehension tests.

(10) Во второй главе книги рассмотрены основные модели чтения для буквенных и иероглифических языков, сделаны некоторые выводы как в методологическом, так и в лингвистическом плане, и, в частности, определено общее и специфическое в рассмотренных моделях. К сожалению, это единственная часть данной работы, заслуживающая внимания, так как остальной материал требует дополнений и более глубокой проработки.

(11) In a recent paper, Heimann used Electroencephalography (EEG) to deepen our understanding of the role of visuo-motor cortices in handwriting categorization. In their experiment, Heimann asked individuals to observe Roman letters (belonging to the alphabet of the participant’s mother language), Chinese (unfamiliar) characters, and scribbles (judged by the participants as not being linguistic symbols).

(12) Jacob knew that if he did not pass the test twice, he would have to start over and repeat the entire gruelling curriculum. If he then failed the firearms test again, he would be dismissed from the academy altogether, quashing perhaps his best shot at an unlikely ascension from war-ravaged Sudan into the American middle class.

(13) He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945.

(14) Хоть он и убеждал Синтию миллион раз в том, что его с его бывшей женой больше ничего не связывает, было заметно, что, развернув письмо от Сары, он прочёл его несколько раз, улыбаясь и иногда глубоко вздыхая. Это заставило Синтию сгорать от ревности, она выбежала из комнаты, едва сдерживая слёзы.