Мир перевода. Р.Л. Стивенсон

Литература во всех ее видах — не что иное, как  тень доброй беседы.

                                 СтивенсонРобертЛьюис (1850 – 1894 гг.)

This year I continue working on the project “ The World of the Translation. Robert Louise  Stivenson”, which was began in the 4 th form. The main task is to do the translation. Well, there are some questions. What literary works have been taken for the translation? Are all of them prose or poems?

The aim:

• to get acquainted with some principles of the translation, methods and ways of decision of the translated tasks.

Tasks:

• to get information from different sources
• to do the translation of the poem “ Shadow” from English into Russian
• to do the translation of the poem “Winter” from Russian into English
• to do the translation of the extract from the adventure story “ Treasure Island” from English into Russian

Methods of the research:

• studying of different sources of information
• analysis of the getting information

And now I would like to tell some words about Robert Louise  Stivenson. Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh in Scotland and he visited many countries in his life. When he was a boy, his father took him out to sea. He loved the water and the islands. The sea gave him many ideas for stories. He wrote his first book when he was only sixteen. After university, he went to France. He met an American girl there and they  married in 1880. They came back to Scotland, and Stevenson wrote Treasure Island (1883). People loved it. Then he wrote The Strange Case of D r Jekyll and M r Hyde (1886). He was very famous after that and he wrote many stories and books. Stevenson was often dangerously ill. His doctor said, ‘You must live in a warm country.’ So, in 1888, he and his family went by ship to the Pacific Islands. They built a house on an island in Samoa. He loved his life there. The Samoan people called Stevenson ‘Tusitala’ - ‘the story-teller’. When he died there, he was only 44.

Under the wide and starry sky,                              
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be

Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Here is the Russian variant:

Реквием:

Под ширью небес, где звезда высока,

Пусть примет меня гробовая доска,

Я радостно жил, и смерть мне легка,

Последний наказ мой таков.

Выбейте их на могиле моей.

Здесь он лежит по воле своей,

Домой воротился моряк из морей,

Охотник спустился с холмов.

These words are written on his grave.

General Plan of the work

1.Reading the works – poems, adventure story

2.Finding the unknown words

3.Trying to make up the translation

4. Some results

For our work we have taken only two extracts to try to understand the principles of the work. But today I’ll represent only one passage because the lack of time.

The first stage is to translate the poem “My Shadow” from English into Russian. You can see the text on the screen.

MY SHADOW

I have a little shadow that goes in and out of me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow –

Not at all like proper children, which  is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball.

And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

The Plan.

• to count the number of nouns, adjectives, verbs

• to determine the Grammar Tense
• to make the literal translation
• to make the translation which can be close to the original text
• to determine the difference in the translations

So, the Russian variant:

Моятень.

Тень бежит за мной вприпрыжку, чуть я только побегу.
Что мне делать с этой тенью, я придумать не могу.
Мы похожи друг на друга, тень проворна и смешна,
И в постель под одеяло первой прыгает она.

Но смешней всего, ребята, - это как она растёт.
Ей терпенья не хватает подрастать из года в год.
То взлетит она, как мячик, по стене гулять пойдёт,
То вдруг так она сожмётся, что и вовсе пропадёт.

This is the translation of the Soviet and Russian writer and translator Ignatij Mikhailovich Ivanovskij.

After the plan-work my literal translation is:

У меня есть маленькая тень,

которая следует за мной  повсюду.

 Более того, я могу ее видетьи она очень и очень похожана меня.

Я вижу, как она ложится спать: сначала она, потом – я.

What are the results?

I made a research and came to some conclusions. They are: 17 nouns, 3 adjectives, 17 verbs (ought, can as well) are in the original context. In the literal translation is the same number of these parts of the speech. As for the Grammar Tense they are Present Simple, Past simple. Well, in the original we can see the ending – s  (plays), verbs – was, rose, stayed; the mark – one morning. My  second translation is ( it is stressed):

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

Однажды очень ранним утром, до восхода солнца,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

Я проснулся, увидев каждую росинку на лютике - цветке.

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Но моя ленивая маленькая тень, как истинная соня

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Осталась  дома и продолжала спать.

And  my third translation is the final work according to the plan (it is stressed). To make the comparison I have taken the professional translation of the Soviet and Russian poet and translator Mikhail LeonidovichLozinskij.

И вот я как-то до зари вскочил с постели рано,

Однажды очень ранним утром, до восхода солнца,

Когда бриллиантилась росой вся в лютиках поляна.

Я проснулся, увидев каждую росинку на лютике - цветке.

Тогда назвал лентяйку-тень я соней настоящей:
Но моя ленивая маленькая тень, как истинная соня

Она в кровати без меня лежать осталась спящей.

Осталась  дома и продолжала спать.

The second stage is the translation from Russian into English the poem “ Winter-time”. I’d like to suggest the translation  ofIgnatijVikhailovichIvanovskij:

Наденет мама шапку мне

И шарф завяжет на спине.
А ветер жжёт меня до слёз

Морозным перцем сыплет в нос.

Мой след чернеет на снегу,
Я белый пар пускать могу,
И всё бело, и дом стоит,
Как будто сахаром облит.

The plan of the work:

• to count a number of nouns and adjectives
• to determine the Grammar Tense
• to try to preserve the rhyme. Is it necessary to add words to convey the main meaning?
• topreservepunctuation
• to read to the parents and to know their opinion

I did the work step by step. I have chosen that in the original there are 5 adjectives, 13 nouns; in the translation of I.M.Ivanovskijthere are  only 5 adjectives; in my translation there are 12 nouns, 6 adjectives. To sum up all these ideas I can say that in my English variant I used nearly the same number of nouns and adjectives as in the original, but the adjectives are not so contextional right or beautiful if you like. This is the last two passages from the poem. My English variant is stressed:

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap 
My mother puts my cap on me,

Me in my comforter and cap; 
And scarf to tie aback.

The cold wind burns my face, and blows 
But the wind which is burning me up to tears,

Its frosty pepper up my nose. 
Like frosty pepper bites my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod;  

My foot-prints is darkning on the snow,

Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;

And I can let  white pairs.

And tree and house, and hill and lake, 

And all is white, and house stands

Are frosted like a wedding cake.

And frosted like a wedding cake.

The third stage is the translation of the passages from the famous adventure story “Treasure Island”.

The Plan:

• to make the parallel translation
• to compare my translation with the author’s
• to clear the using of the parts of the speech (adjectives mostly)
• to clear the difference in the word order in the sentences in the original and mine

But firstly I want to say a few words about the parallel translation. What’s this? This is the reading of the same text using two languages: English and Russian, in my case. You read the text in English and write down the literal Russian variant, and then the literary translation into Russian. There is the another method which was used by  HenryShlimann. First he read the textin the native language and then he raed the non-adapted text in the foreign language. The pluses of the parallel translation is the development of the linguistic sense, ability to guess how to translate better. Step by step, you are able to understand the learning language’s grammar structures, some pecualarities of using the words. As for me, I took the non-adapted text. For the  first time, I wrote the literal then, for the second time, the literary translations. On the screen you can see the first extract in the original.

1)

The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow

SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the  whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and  that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbоw inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut- brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of hissoiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarr with black, broken nails, and    the sabre cut across one cheek,a dirty, livid white. I remember him lo-oking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

           "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars.

Now the parallel translation made using the method of Iliaj Frank

Сквайр [дворянский титул в Англии] Трелони, доктор Ливси и другие джентльмены попросили меня написать все, что я знаю об Острове Сокровищ.

Им хочется, чтобы я рассказал всю историю, с самого начала до конца, не скрывая никаких подробностей, кроме географического положения острова.

Указывать, где лежит этот остров, в настоящее время еще невозможно, так как и теперь там хранятся сокровища, которых мы не вывезли.

И вот в нынешнем, 17... году я берусь за перо и мысленно возвращаюсь к тому времени, когда у моего отца был трактир"АдмиралБенбоу" [Бенбоу - английский адмирал, живший в конце XVII века] и в этом трактире поселился старый загорелый моряк с сабельным шрамом на щеке.

Я помню, словно это было вчера, как, тяжело ступая, он дотащился до наших дверей, а его морской сундук везли за ним на тачке.

Это был высокий, сильный, грузный мужчина с темным лицом.

Просмоленная косичка торчала над воротом его засаленного синего кафтана.

Руки у него были шершавые, в каких-то рубцах, ногти черные, поломанные, а сабельный шрам на щеке - грязновато-белого цвета, со свинцовым оттенком.

Помню, как незнакомец, посвистывая, оглядел нашу бухту и вдруг загорланил старую матросскую песню, которую потом пел так часто:

Пятнадцать человек на сундук мертвеца.

Йо-хо-хо, и бутылка рому!

Голос у него был стариковский, дребезжащий, визгливый, как скрипучая вымбовка [рычаг шпиля (ворота, служащего для подъема якоря)].

И палка у него была, как ганшпуг [рычаг для подъема тяжестей].

Mytranslation:

Сквайр Трелони, доктор Ливси и другие джентльмены попросили меня написать про Остров, не опуская никакие детали, и только не говорить про местоположение, потому что клад все еще находится там. Я взял ручку в нынешнем 17.. и «вернулся» назад в то время, когда мой отец был владельцем гостиницы «Адмирал Бенбоу» и в ней поселился  старый, загоревший  моряк, со шрамом от сабли на щеке.

Я помню его, будто это было вчера, как он притащился к нашим дверям, а его морской сундук везли на ручной тележке за ним. Это был высокий, сильный, огромный мужчина, а его смолистая косичка торчала из его засаленного синего цвета пальто, его руки были ободраны и все в шрамах, ногти сломанные и черные, а сабельный шрам на щеке был бело-грязного цвета с багровым оттенком. Я помню, как он посвистывая осмотрел нашу бухту и, сразу после этого, загорланил старую матросскую песню, которую пел потом  часто:

Пятнадцать человек на сундук мертвеца.

Йо-хо-хо, и бутылка рому!

своим  высоким, стариковским, дребезжащим голосом.

2)

There were nights when he took a deal more rumandwater than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked, old, wild seasongs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing.

Мой перевод:

Были ночи, когда он выпивал столько ромы с водой, что «сходил с ума», тогда он мог сидеть и петь свои коварные, старые, морские и дикие песни, не замечая никого;  но случалось и такое, что он мог пригласить выпить и заставить всю дрожащую компанию слушать его истории или подпевать хором его песням.

After the dictionary work and parallel translation I came to some results:

• it was difficult to do the translation not knowing the meaning of some. So, it took me rather much time to use them right according to the context.

• there are some difficulties in the writing of the sentences. In my opinion, the sentences of I. Frank are written more correctly, they are close to the specific features of the Russian language. So, the reading is more interesting and thrilling. My translation is not so thrilling, but it is rather close to the contex and grammatically correct.

As for the using of adjectives

• in the original there are 20 of them. At the same time, I point the attention of using Ving forms.
• in the author’s translation there are 28 of them. I think, he used more adjectives to make us feelthe characters and the atmosphere of the events happening that time. Moreover, he used the specific words concerning the sea contex.
• in my translation there are 24 of them. Well, I try to characterize the main hero close to the context, feeling of the events. It was difficult to use the sea contex. That’s why the last sentence I did not translate it fully. As for the grammar, the text is translated right. The second extract was translated rather quick as I completely grasped the sense of the work, made the algorithm of the work.

And the last question is: what work was more difficult for me? In my opinion, the most difficult work was to translate the extract from the adventure story “ Treasure Island”. The poem we can sing and this way we can feel the emotions, understand the author’s world. In prose we have to translate in harmony with the mentality, circumstances, emotions, grammar rules and the right way of using the words. Moreover, it is necessary to preserve the author’s individuality. In my opinion, in the poems for children it was   easier to do all these.        

Conclusions:

• learn to translate the words, sentences and their using according to the context
• learn to punctuate according to the context
• compare translations of several authors: their feelings, attitude to the original text
• learn to do the parallel translation
• learn a lot of new words.