Masaryk University Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- "Povídám, takovýho dodavetele kdyby císař potkal na kole, tak mu vezme..."
- Possible misprint
- 6 CONCLUSION
- 7 SUMMARY
- 8 LIST OF USED SOURCES Brown, Gillian.
- Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga.
- Heim, Michael.
- Levý, Jiří.
- Newmark, Peter.
59 is a direct translation of the original; the meaning is well transmitted. Consequently, the translation makes sense in the target language context.
language because of its universality - the host is an internationally recognized symbol of Jesus Christ's body and is worshipped by Christians of both source and target language culture. The only interesting distinction is the usage of spitting on in the translation, because in Czech spit on means plivat na; more accurate would be using spitting out (spit out – vyplivnout). Grammar In the section dedicated to translating grammatical features, I focused mainly on tenses as they are most significant and most likely to be compared. The aim is to decide whether the used grammatical structure does or does not change the resulting meaning of the translation in comparison with the original.
transfer the meaning of uvidím in this context.
suitable equivalent. "Povídám, takovýho dodavetele kdyby císař potkal na kole, tak mu vezme..." - "I'm telling you, if the Emperor met the likes of your court-appointed supplier riding on a bicycle he'd have taken his..." – Here, we can detect two grammatical features. Firstly, it is the use of present continuous tense in povídám - I'm telling, which is suitable. Secondly, it is the translation of the conditional clause kdyby císař potkal na
60 correspondence with English grammatical rules and also with the original meaning. tak jeden blbec zbacal boty a donesl je - there's this idiot scuffs up his shoes and brings them - There is a shift of tense from the past to present in the translation, though it is appropriate. Possible misprint There was one item which seemed extremely interesting to me, yet I was not sure to which category I should have put it. Nevertheless, as it seemed to me as a pure misprint I created another category for it.
but in the translation this is transferred as twelve. I could not think about any other possible explanation than that this is a misprint. Another possible explanation is that twenty crates simply seemed too much to the translator. Phrases Finally, I would like to pay attention to a minor, yet from my point of view still interesting category of phrases, i.e. the sentences or expressions which are used in certain situations. Their translation should not be difficult because they are used quite universally. In addition, there is a broad area of overlap concerning Czech and English. Therefore, most of phrases have their counterpart in the other language.
there is no other suitable possibility.
61 5.4 Quality of translation The translator managed to achieve his intentions in a very satisfactory way. The plot of the novel is without any doubt transferred with a great faithfulness, which in my opinion makes it comprehensible and enjoyable for the target language readership. This is caused by the fact that the translator stays at the reader's linguistic level all the time. As was mentioned before, the original contains lots of elements which are uneasy to translate, but the translator did a very good job coping with them. Even in the cases when he had to use explanation, he did it with easiness which does not interrupt the flow of the text and is not intrusive. Transmitting of the meaning of individual words and expressions is almost always done without any change, apart from those few cases I mentioned in the previous chapter. However, as I am supossed to evaluate the translation independently of the original, these changes could be consider unnecessary because they are found insignificant by the target language readership. Nevertheless, Hrabal's text is unique mainly for its poetical impression on the readers. Concerning this aspect of the novel, I am not sure if the translator fully managed to transfer it. It is very difficult to create the very same atmosphere as the original did and I am afraid that this is not achieved in the translation. The overall quality of the translation is very high, though from my personal point of view it still misses the emotive impact of the original. This is not connected with any concrete component of the translation; this is rather based on my feelings. If I had to describe it, I would say that the translation as a whole seems colder and more abstract than the original. This is without any doubt caused at first by cultural differences as well as by my own standards and requirements for translations. However, I realize that achieving a full correspondence with all aspects of the original is almost impossible; therefore, I would asses Naughton's translation as accurate at all levels and the intentions of the translator as fulfilled.
62 5.5 The translation's future The goal of this sub-chapter is to assess the translation's future and successfulness within the target language culture. Unfortunately, because I am not a native speaker of English and at the same time not very experienced in English cultural environment, I am able to do this only at the level of pure assumption. Judging from the pieces of knowledge I gained during preparing my bachelor thesis, I would say that Naughton's translation is very likely to be successful among readers. As I already mentioned in the previous sub-chapter, reading the translation is enjoyable, the text is written smoothly and in an extremely comprehensible way for the target language readership. Thus I do not see any reason why this translation should not become popular. Moreover, I think that since the source language text is full of cultural aspects which are well transmitted, the target language readership could find it attractive because they would be able to gain some cultural knowledge through it. Anyway, the topic of the novel itself is a great allurement for any keen reader.
63 6 CONCLUSION This is the conclusion of my bachelor thesis. Firstly, I am going to briefly summarize the stages through which I went while working on my bachelor thesis. Secondly, I am going to conclude the practical part of my work and state my conclusions resulting from the translation analysis. Finally, I close the conclusion with evaluation of my work and its benefits in general sense as well as its benefits for me personally. The aim of my bachelor work was to analyse and compare items of direct speech in Bohumil Hrabal's Postřižiny and its English translation by J. D. Naughton called Cutting it short. The first part of the work is theoretical and prepares background for the practical analysis. I summarized the basic knowledge about spoken interaction in general and compared its typical characteristics with those of written language. Furthermore, the theoretical part deals with spoken forms of Czech and English. The structure of each language is briefly described and their typical features are pointed out. In addition, this chapter contains also a part dedicated to certain grammatical features of Czech and English, their comparison and capture of differences between them. Additionally, there is a chapter dedicated to the theory of translation. This chapter deals with methods of translation, with the theory of equivalent effect and first of all with Newmark's plan of translation criticism which is the most important part of the practical analysis. Finally, translation of dialect is discussed, as it is one of the most frequent phenomenons I dealt with in the practical part. The practical part consists of a brief introduction in which the logic of my work is described. After that, the analysis follows the pattern suggested by Newmark. Thus, in the first part, there is a source language text analysis in which I stated the intentions of the author of the novel: at first to describe a part of his childhood and capture the atmosphere of that time; the leitmotif of the novel is then collision of the old and the new era. I also described the language of the novel and the devices which the author used to achieve such a high quality and richness of
64 language. In the second part of the analysis, I considered the original text from the point of view of the translator. The possible problems of the translation and difficult parts are pointed out in here as well as the method of translation which is suitable for this kind of text - communicative translation. The third part is dedicated to comparison of the translation and source language text. Since this part is the heart of my work, I would like to devote more space to it. The basis of the translation analysis is represented by the corpus which I incorporated into the chapter. The corpus consisting of chosen extracts from the original text and their English counterparts serves as an aid for creating the translation analysis. The analysis is divided into categories which are filled with items of common features. There are fourteen categories: dialect, vulgarisms,
categories and to state the conclusions which I came to during the analysis. Firstly, the categories of phrases, metaphors, under-translations and the category possible misprint are rather minor, because they all contain only one item. As for the metaphors and phrases, the resulting translation is appropriate; my reasons for this statement are thoroughly expressed in the analysis. The low number of items in the category of under-translations is a mark of high quality of the translation and its capability to convey the original without unnecessary reduction of the meaning. The category of possible misprint is quite clear according to its name and contains an item which, in my opinion, is rather a result of misprint than the intention of the translator. Secondly, one of the broadest categories - dialect showed that the translator follows traditional and suggested pattern of translating dialect. He does not translate it with another dialect but only indicates it by using colloquial expressions and devices to distinguish speech of the characters speaking dialect from those who use common form of spoken language. Thirdly, vulgarisms are mostly transferred appropriately and are
65 successful at conveying the level of vulgarity of the original text. Fourthly, there is a considerable number of words of German origin in the original text. As my analysis showed, the translator coped with them in two ways: either he used the particular German word in its original form or he completely omits it and uses another expression to transmit the meaning. Fifthly, the words of professional slang are usually translated by their direct equivalents from the target language, apart from one case in which the translation does not transmit exactly the meaning of the original word. Sixthly, cultural words were the most interesting category to compare. As there were no appropriate direct equivalents to these words, the translator had to use explanation to convey the meaning in seven out of sixteen cases. However, the level of preserving the meaning and cultural context is considerably high.
Seventh, number of over-translations in the text is relatively small, which once again marks the translation as very good. Eighth, idioms of the original text are translated well by their English counterparts because they are common in both cultural areas. Ninth, similes are in the most of the cases translated in an accurate way and also transmit the meaning. There was only one case of shift in the meaning on which I thoroughly commented in the analysis. Tenth, I chose three examples of change of the meaning from the translation. The reasons why I chose these particular extracts and also suggested solution are included in the respective category. Nevertheless, in the context of the target language these changes of meaning are insignificant. Eleventh, I included several cases of translating grammar: namely tenses and conditional clauses. All the grammatical features were translated appropriately and did not change the meaning of the original text. Finally, I assessed the translation from the point of view of its overall quality, i.e. how the translator managed to fulfil his own intentions. The overall quality was evaluated as accurate and the translator's intentions as fully fulfilled. Though, as I added from my personal point of view, the achieved emotive function
66 of the translation is different than it was while reading the original. Additionally, I evaluated the translation's future within the target language culture as promising and likely to be popular among the readers. As I have mentioned and included everything I wanted in the thesis, I consider my work on this particular topic closed and I am not planning to continue with it in the future. However, as was already written, Hrabal's work is very challenging topic in the area of translation theory. As a consequence, there is a wide range of features which can be analysed and assessed, not only in "Cutting it short" but also in other works of this author. Considering general benefits of my thesis, I would say that it could serve as a basis or a practical example for those who would like to dedicate their bachelor or diploma thesis to similar topic in the future. I benefited from work on this thesis a lot. At first, I expanded my knowledge in the area of translation theory; I became acquainted with the most common methods of translation and with the basic terminology of translation theory. As I am interested in translating, I find this benefit the most important. I also gained valuable information from the area of spoken interaction, especially about basics of spoken forms of Czech and English. Moreover, writing the thesis in English certainly improved my knowledge of the language and writing skills. Further, I learned a lot about Czech language too while working on the practical part of the thesis, which required a deeper insight into linguistic theory of Czech. Since the Czech language is not my field of study, this was quite interesting for me.
67 7 SUMMARY The aim of bachelor thesis "Translations of Czech fiction to English: Bohumil Hrabal - Postřižiny" is to analyse and compare translation of direct speech in the translation of Hrabal's work by James D. Naughton called "Cutting it short". The work consists of theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part is at first dedicated to spoken interaction and its general characteristics. Further, the theoretical part deals with spoken forms of Czech and English. The last part is dedicated to theory of translation and deals with methods of translation, equivalent effect, translation criticism and translation of dialect. The practical part of the thesis consists of translation analysis and follows the plan of translation criticism by Peter Newmark. The thesis is closed with conclusion which includes brief review of the work and my conclusions.
68 8 LIST OF USED SOURCES Brown, Gillian. "Understanding spoken language." Tesol Quarterly. 12.3 (1978) : 271-283. Print.
Print.
Čermák, František. "Spoken Czech." Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech sociolinguistics. Ed. Eva Eckert. Amsterdam - Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993. Print.
Context. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2009. Print.
Academia, 1994. Print.
s francouzským slovosledem." MA thesis. Masarykova univerzita, 2007. Print.
Print.
Hrabal, Bohumil. Cutting it short and The little town where time stood still. Trans. James D. Naughton. London: Abacus, 1994. Print. Knittlová, Dagmar, et al. Překlad a překládání. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2010. Print. Kraus, Jiří. "Does spoken literary Czech exist?" Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech sociolinguistics. Ed. Eva Eckert. Amsterdam - Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993. Print. Levý, Jiří. Umění překladu. Praha: Ivo Ţelezný, nakladatelství a vydavatelství, spol. s.r.o., 1998. Print. Meyer, Charles F. Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print. Newmark, Peter. A Textbook of Translation. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall Europe, 1988. Print. Stenstörm, Anna-Brita. An Introduction to Spoken Interaction. Harlow: Longman, 1994
Wyld, Henry C. K. A history of modern colloquial English.Oxford: Basil Blacwell, 1956. Print.
69 9 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Maxims of the cooperative principle ........................................................... 10 Table 2: Linguistic features of speech and writing .................................................... 11 Table 3: Tags and their meanings ............................................................................... 34 Yüklə 0,55 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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