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104УДК 81.33
Cultural Information / Memory and Aesthetic Information in Literary Translation
Veronica A. Razumovskaya*
Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 4.11.2011, received in revised form 11.11.2011, accepted 16.12.2011
This article deals with the problems of storage of cultural information and cultural memory as well as aesthetic information in literary text. Particularly great attention is paid to different types of culturonyms and the strategies of their reconstruction in translation. The material for the analysis is taken from the M.A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” and its first Chinese translation.
Keywords: cultural information, cultural memory, aesthetic information, cultural capital, textual grids, culturonym, anthroponym, toponym, cultural explanation.
Introduction:
Information and Culture
The category of information which suggests availability of some information and knowledge transferred through a specific bearer is one of the “eternal” and universal categories of science (Ursul, 1975; Chernavsky, 2004). Progress of human civilization is directly caused by a set of closely interrelated and interdependent processes of informational interaction, including those of transmitting,receiving,processing(interpretation) and retaining information. Another important process that is closely related to the preservation and development of civilization is that of information exchanging. Regardless of the type of information and the type of information bearer as well as the information channel all of the above mentioned information processes are universal
in nature and are represented in all the areas of human activity.
A special place in permanently expanding information exchange belongs to the information presented in the language as well as mythological, visual, musical, literary and other cultural semiotic systems. In a broader sense, culture can be understood as a “totality of the results of people‘s activities which have created a system of traditional human values, both material and spiritual” (Mironov, 2011: 9). Culture has traditionally been viewed as a special sign system that performs the role of a mediator between the man and the world around him. The study of the diverse and multi-dimensional culture systems has allowed to define such systems as secondary semiotic systems that are based on the natural language, but with a more complex structure
* Corresponding author E-mail address: veronica_raz@hotmail.com
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
(Barthes, 1994; Lotman, 1998). The most common and well-studied secondary semiotic system of culture include literary texts. Each national culture has a certain body of literary texts, which provide a national literary tradition, and cross-cultural interaction and mutual influence of literary traditions. Corpus of literary texts has a pronounced field structure, which includes a center and a periphery. The center of the corpus is formed by the key literary texts, known to both the most educated members of this culture and members of the “foreign” cultural communities. In some cases, literary texts construct the cultural core which performs the dominant role in the comprehension of certain cultures by “their own people” and “strangers” and determines the apparent informational literature centricity of these cultures. The Russian culture is a striking example of literature-centric (textocentric according to Yu.M. Lotman) culture.
Information in Literary Text:
Types, Functions and Features
The main task of a literary text (or any work of art) is to exercise artistic communication, involving aesthetic impact on the recipient of the art object. Realization of the aesthetic impact (aesthetic function) is ensured by the presence in the text (or any other media) of aesthetic information, which is the result of image-associative, artistic and aesthetic reflection of reality. Decoding of aesthetic and informational code of the message is a complex subjective process of understanding and getting familiar with the piece of art by the subject (Philipiev, 1971). This informational process has several successive stages of decoding, and its success is determined by social and personal status of the subject (the recipient) (Yelina, 2002).
To be more precise, various types of information (heterogeneous set of information) are presented in the finished literary text. Aesthetic
information prevails in a literary text and can be defined as a subtype of emotional information, “which specializes in designing sense of beauty” (Alexeeva, 2008: 55). Considering the important issues of the poetic text and poetic translation, S.F. Goncharenko remarked that verbal communication, implemented through the work of art, is defined in special literature as verbal and artistic communication, and verbal and artistic communication, implemented through the poetic texts is a poetic communication, in its turn subdivided into two subtypes: semantic and aesthetic ones (Goncharenko, 1999: 109). Semantic communication is based on semantic information, which in some studies is more accurately referred to as cognitive information, representing objective information about the external world (Alexeeva, 2008). Distinguishing of cognitive and aesthetic information is applicable not only to the poetic text, but also to any literary text. Cognitive information of literary texts is subordinate to the aesthetic information and is used by the author for cultural purposes.
One of the important features of aesthetic information provided in all possible media, is ambiguity. G. Caglioti, addressing the problems of unification of science and art analyses ambiguity at both levels: that of perception and the artistic and cultural levels. Using manifestations of ambiguity in various human activities as an example he demonstrates modern process of elimination of distinctions between humanities and science. (Caglioti, 1983). It is ambiguity that allows multiple interpretations of the content (information) of a literary text both within its own culture and language in the perception of readers of the text belonging to the culture and language of the original, and in the situation of interlanguage translation (in synchrony and diachrony). Ambiguity of aesthetic information is the basis of such categories of literary translation
as inexhaustibility of the original and multiplicity of translation (Tchaikovsky, Lysenkova, 2001) presumed to have potential polyvariability and polylinguality of the original text.
The category of translation multiplicity is a relatively new category of translation studies established primarily for the artistic interpretation and postulating the possibility of existence of several translations of the texts of a particular culture into one or more foreign languages (Ortega y Gasset, 1991; Tchaikovsky, 1997). In contrast to literary translation, the translation of informative type texts, carried out mainly in order to obtain specific information usually does not involve creating several versions of the translation of the original text into one language provided that the first version was of good quality. If the first translation into any foreign language is a success, the original text of informative type isn’t usually translated into that language any more.
In translation theory, there are different points of view on the essence of translation multiplicity. Yu.D. Levin defines translation multiplicity as “the possibility of the existence in the national literature of several translations of a foreign language literary work, which has in the original, as a rule, one text version” (Levin, 1992: 213). R.R. Tchaikovsky in his polemics with Yu.D. Levin did not agree with the possibility of existence in “the national literature”, and suggests considering the phenomenon of translation multiplicity in the context of translated literature as a “third literature”, which occupies an intermediate position between the foreign-language literature and literature of the target language (Tchaikovsky, 1997). Different points of view on the phenomenon of translation multiplicity as well as on the place of translated fiction in the world and national cultural space does not cast doubt on such categorical evidence of the original and translation as their primary and secondary roles, synchronicity and
diachronicity, inexhaustibility, which allows the researchers to formulate the postulates of translation multiplicity (Tchaikovsky, Lysenkova, 2001: 188-198).
A deep analysis of the phenomena of translation multiplicity carried out on the material of translations of a number of important literary works into many foreign languages, allowed R.R. Tchaikovsky to come to the conclusion that each original is possible to be translated: “... with the emergence of the original a kind of force field, whose energy can lead to translation comes to existence” (Tchaikovsky, Lysenkova, 2001: 186). It is this possibility that provides a potential polytextuality (numerous foreign-language versions) of a literary work. According to the researcher, the original literary text generates a translated text, but the index of polytextuality varies depending on various factors: linguistic, cultural, translational,
historical, political, economic, having objective and subjective nature. The choice of a literary text as an object of translation is largely due to the tradition and stability of cultural contacts of the source-language and the target-language, author’s popularity of the original text in “their” and “foreign” cultures, the artistic value of the original, literary preferences of both a customer and the publisher of the translation, etc.
Cultural Aspect in Literary Translation: Cultural Capital and Textual Grids
Taking into consideration cultural context is obligatory when retranslating the meaning (information) of the original text into translated text. It is an axiom of literary translation. In contrast to all other types of translation literary translation is virtually impossible without cultural context. However, literary translation is not just “simple” semantic and cultural recoding of the original literary text by means of target language and culture. The search for cultural
patterns of translation of literary texts has had fairly long history. Introduction of the concept of cultural context when considering the problems of translation allowed scholars more objectively and thoroughly deal with the problems of quality of literary translation and cultural adaptation (Grishaeva, 1999).
Significant contribution to the development of cultural and contextual approach to translation was made by American theorist of literary translation A. Lefevre, who defined key literary texts of culture as national and world cultural heritage (cultural capital).The researcher noted, not only a particular cultural significance of such texts, but also their systematic and structural organization within “their” cultures. According to A. Lefevre these texts form within individual cultures specific textual grids, which lie outside language aspects of cultures and in a certain way come before. On the one hand, literary texts are embedded in a certain way into “their own” cultural space, but on the other hand, cultural space structured by textual grids generates new literary texts. Being artificial, historical, conventional, volatile, and obscure the textual grids are assimilated by people of native culture to such an extent that are perceived as “natural” (Bassnett, Lefevre, 1998: 5). The idea of textual grids by A. Lefevre is largely consonant with the theories of lattices presented in the various fields of knowledge. For example, in mathematics (algebra), the concept of lattice is equivalent to the concept of structure and is regarded as a partially ordered set. By the end of the first third of the XX century the theory of lattices became an independent direction in algebra (Gretser, 1982). The method of geometric construction of spiral lattices is widely used in architectural bionics (Shubnikov, Koptsik, 1972). Cardano’s lattice is effectively applied in cryptography to encode and decode texts (G. Cardano: an Italian mathematician, philosopher and physician of
the XVI century) (Bellini, 1947). According to I.V. Arnold the tendency towards general mathematization of the sciences and humanities in the XX century, which corresponds to a more general trend towards unification of science and art, was highly intensified, leading to the use of the concept of lattice in linguistics (Arnold, 1991). To analyze the location of synonymy and homonymy in the lexical system of language I.V. Arnold suggested using lattice known as Veitch diagram (Arnold, 1966). Repertory grids technique based on the principles of the theory of personal constructs developed by George Kelly (Slater, 1976), is used to describe a linguistic personality in linguistics (Maltseva, 2000), in teaching methods (Mikhailovskaya, 2002), as well as in experimental and social psychology (Fransella, Bannister, 1987). The idea of objective existence and practical application for scientific analysis of linguistic (perceptive, practical) lattices and lattices of cultures was also expressed by theorist of poststructuralism M. Foucault (Foucault, 1969).
Along withtextual grids A. Lefevre separated out conceptual grids. It is textual and conceptual grids that regulate the cognitive processes within individual cultures. Having put forward the hypothesis of the existence of textual grids, A. Lefevre pointed out the importance of giving due consideration when translating, for the place of the original literary text in a textual grid of their own culture and the probable location of the texttranslation in the grid of translating culture. The researcher stated that there are cultures whose textual grids exhibit considerable overlap, when the original text and translated text will occupy almost the same location in the textual grids of the original and translating cultures. The main reason for this coincidence is the fact that such cultures with very high probability in the distant past had a common cultural source, which allowed them later to preserve a certain similarity.
Some cultures have unique textual grids, which structure is unique and is characterized by homogeneity (Bassnett, Lefevre, 1998: 14). Striking examples of homogeneous cultural grids are many cultures of the East: Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Naturaly, these cultures can not be defined as totally isolated, sealed, since the historical paths of development of these Eastern countries have identified the causes and forms of their cultural interaction. Thus, long-term development of Japanese culture in the situation of geographical, economic and cultural isolation and mono-ethnic society, most likely, has resulted in a unique Japanese textual grid, which has almost no common ground with textual grids of other cultures and, above all, with grids of Western cultures. However, the examples of regular cultural contacts of Japan can certainly include cultural interaction with China. Japanese cultural identity is reflected in a peculiarity of Japanese translation tradition, generated primarily by the needs of cultural and economic contexts only with China. In the IX century there existed a method of annotation translation of Chinese texts (kanbun kundoku) (Kondo, Wakabayshi, 2001).
Cultural Information and Cultural Memory in Literary Texts
The text is a form of expression of a deep semantic field of culture that allows us to speak about the cultural space of a literary text (Ivleva, 2009). It is quite clear that the belonging of the text to the textual grid is determined by the presence in this text cultural information (cultural experience, national-cultural semantics) - the information about the main events, persons, which are connected with the lives of national and cultural communities - the information of large communicative importance. The cultural information has got the heterogeneous nature presented by internal (“their own” cultural
information of the people belonging to a definite culture) and external (“foreign” cultural information) types, as well as material (things, artifacts created by a man) and spiritual (norms, symbols, traditions, beliefs, myths) types.
The storage of a definite (the most important) portion of the cultural information can be studied in the context of the notion of “cultural memory”, implying one of the external parameter of human memory which has the temporal and social aspects as well as the social tradition and communication (Assmann, 1992). The notion of cultural memory has displaced the problem of memory research from the field of biology to the field of culture. Cultural memory is a symbolic form of transmission (broadcasting) and the mainstreaming of cultural meanings that goes beyond the experience of an individual and represents the most significant past. In special studies, cultural memory is defined as a collective phenomenon (Halbwachs, 1968) or as a collective memory, the supra-individual mechanism for storing and sending messages (texts) and generating new ones (Lotman, 1992). Cultural memory is presented by inaccurate and often altered information on the events of the past. But unlike cultural information, which is about the exact nature and is not always available to all members of a cultural community because of lack of access to the sources of information, cultural memory is a common, unifying public asset. Cultural memory is the cultural information, but the information which had undergone the procedure of understanding and conservation in mass consciousness. Cultural memory, the repositories of which are myths, fairy tales, legends and literature, is not a personal experience of a person, and is inherited from previous generations (Jung, 1997).
Cultural memory has traditionally been a subject of interdisciplinary studies of philosophers, theologists, sociologists,
historians, anthropologists, ethnologists, literary scholars, and linguists. The success and credibility of the results of scientific study of cultural memory depends on finding effective research methodology. Thus, such research neo-terms and neo-objects as “archaeology of knowledge” (Foucault, 1969), “archaeology of literary communication” (Assmann, 1991) and “archeology of the text” (Grilikhes, 1999) suggest that this is the text that is one of the traditional repositories of both cultural information and cultural memory. It should be noted, that the term of storage can be carried out within the time period of several millennia. Archeology in this context is an effective method of extracting information and its research. As noted above, there are cultures in which the archiving and transmission of cultural information and cultural memory occurs predominantly by means of written literary texts. In this context, the idea expressed by Yu.M. Lotman, that texts are not passive repositories of constant information, since they are not warehouses but generators, in turn, memory is not a passive repository of culture, and forms a part of its text-producing mechanism is crucial (Lotman, 1992). Original literary text, especially classical text, is a system-structural formation open to imitation and able to be continued in “their own” and “foreign” linguacultures. Repeatability (extendability) of the original text in translation is in the situation of complementarity with respect to the original text, and imitativity - in the situation of variability.
The above discussion leads to the conclusion that the content of a literary text is a complex information set constituted by the dominant aesthetic information, with cognitive and cultural information, as well as such a type of cultural information as cultural memory subject to it. Interaction of all types of information is based on the principle of complementarity. Cognitive
and cultural forms of information are used by the author of the text for cultural purposes and for the implementation of the aesthetic function. As well as aesthetic information cultural information / cultural memory presents the ambiguous content of the text, subject to the ambiguous decoding in the process of understanding. Means of presenting in the text of aesthetic and cultural information in some cases may overlap. They include toponyms and anthroponyms united in special literature by the concept culturonym (Kabakchi, 2001). Thus, culturonyms become bearers of both cultural and aesthetic information.
Bulgakov’s Texts as the Storage of Cultural and Aesthetic Information: Translational Aspect
All the above suggests that information presented in an artistic text is very complex and includes information of aesthetic, cultural, and cognitive types. Cultural information set aside regarding the mandatory orientation towards the culture, can be attributed, on the one hand, to the information of cognitive type and defined as a special kind of cognitive information. On the other hand, like any other cognitive information, cultural information can perform an aesthetic function (that is to be aesthetic information) on the basis of functional specialization of the literary text.
One of the most significant artistic texts of Russian culture, belonging, no doubt, to the center of the Russian text body, is a novel by M.A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”. Aesthetic and artistic values of that symbolically complex and multidimensional text, the originality of the poetic language of the author, stable interest of several generations of readers to the plot lines and characters of the novel specify the ability of the literary text to generate multiple intersemiotic (screen versions, plays, operas, symphonies, musicals) and interlingual
translations of “The Master and Margarita”. Foreign-language translations of the novel, which continue to appear regularly, not only in related and unrelated linguacultures, but within the same linguaculture, form one of the famous centers of translational attraction.
In the novel panchronic space of cultural information / memory is presented in three layers of time - daily time (Moscow time of the first third of the XX century - the time of writing the novel), the time of eternity (Biblical times) and the infernal time. Thus, both reading (decoding) and translation (decoding and recoding) of the literary text is a kind of “archaeological excavation” in the depths of cultural information / memory, when the author of the original acts as a transmitter of this information/memory , and the translator as “retransmitter” to other cultures . A reader and the translator of the text are at a specific time and cultural distance from the author of the novel and the created text. The relationship between the object (text of the novel) and recipients (readers), is not that of passive perception, but is dialogic in nature and can be explained by the presence of common cultural information / memory in addresser (the author of the text) and addressee (recipient of the text). Absence of this condition makes the literary text unreadable and impossible to decode. The shared memory should be understood as the state of culture, experience, knowledge and expertise, facilities, bringing together the object (and its author- addresser of the message) and recipient (addressee) in a communicative act. In the context of interpretive translation studies V.N. Bazylev and Yu.A. Sorokin determine memory of the text as a sum of contexts in which the text becomes meaningful, and which in some way are incorporated into it. “This semantic space, created by the text around itself, starts a certain relationship with the cultural memory (tradition), sedimented in the minds of the audience. As a
result, the text regains its semantic life” (Bazylev, Sorokin, 2000).
When creating a foreign language translation of the novel there occurs a certain cultural conflict caused by the collision of “their own” and “foreign” cultural information and cultural memory, which is especially evident when translating the original text from Russian into unrelated languages. In this case, the main tasks of a translator are both reconstruction in the source text of general (invariant) space of cultural information / memory (present in the cultures with a common cultural source and / or a long history of cultural contacts and cultural interactions) and “explanation” of the key subjects, objects, and events of cultural memory in the original, not found in the memory of target culture. Reasoning about the interaction of languages in cross-language translation, Yu.M. Lotman writes about the two languages, “between which there is a relationship of untranslatability. Elements of the first language have no equivalents in the structure of the second. However, following cultural convention ... between the structures of these two languages relations of conditional equivalence are established” (Lotman, 1992).
Cultural convention allows us to overcome cultural untranslatability, although absolute translatability can not be achieved due to many objective and subjective reasons. Conditional equivalence of the original text and the translation of the text should be viewed from the perspective of a universal scientific category of symmetry, which suggests full / partial / relative / negative cognitive, aesthetic, cultural symmetry of information in the original and in the translation. The greatest difficulty for a translator is the creation of culturally symmetrical translation to genetically unrelated languages and cultures. Chinese translations of the novel fall into this category.
Bulgakov’s text “remembers” the images of real cultural figures of the past (composers, writers), historical figures (participants of the infernal ball), images of Gospel characters, real scenes where characters live and act in the novel, as well as historical events, reflected in the cultural memory and literary and religious texts written before the novel (the Bible, “The Brothers Karamazov” by F. Dostoyevsky, “Faust” by J.W. Goethe, “Anna Karenina” by L. Tolstoy, “El Diabolo cojuelo” by Luis Vélez de Guevara”, etc). Through cultural information and cultural memory archived in the text of the novel the author creates cultural and ideological polyphony full of events and images which makes the novel a cult work of Russian literature of the XX century. Various forms to introduce cultural information and memory and familiarize with it are used: quotations, allusions, biblical proper names in “Yershalaim” chapters and proper names of characters in “Moscow” chapters of the novel, toponyms of Yershalaim (Jerusalem) and Moscow.
Proper names form an important layer of meaning of Bulgakov’s text, as a direct or indirect reflection of the original picture of the world, as well as an important tool for creation of its personal poetics. Since proper names are the result of closely interrelated cultural and linguistic evolution of society, personal names and surnames (anthroponyms) inevitably act as bearers of cultural markedness within the same culture as well as the cultures that share a common genetic source (Slavic culture) or religion (Christian or Muslim culture). Proper names represent historical and socio-cultural connotation, reflecting the spirit of the nation and the spirit of a particular historical epoch. Thus, the Russian culture in Moscow of the first half of the XX century and the culture of Judea Yershalaim (Jerusalem) of the beginning of first millennium have no common cultural and
onomastic similarities, which are reflected in anthroponyms presented in “Moscow” and “Yershalaim” chapters of the novel. In addition to the characteristic function, reflecting national and social context of artistic works, names of the characters in the novel serve to create a satirical and comic effect, and are defined by researchers as “speaking” names, names with clear semantics (Boldyreva, 1996). Anthroponyms and toponyms in both linguacultural and translational aspects are classified as nonequivalent vocabulary (Maslova, 2007: 36-37). We’d like to emphasize once again that these culturonyms are regular bearers of cultural information and reflect peculiarities of perception of the world by native speakers of this or that language. Culturonyms due to peculiar features of their form and content vary in the degree of untranslatability and require specific translation strategies to effectively solve the “eternal” translation problems (Denisova,
1998).
At the moment there are eight translations of “The Master and Margarita” in Chinese. The last novel by M.A. Bulgakov written by the author in the period from 1929 to 1940 (the year of his death), was first published in Russia in 19661967. Almost immediately translations of the novel into different languages began to appear. For example, the first English translation was published as early as 1967, German and French -in 1968, Japanese - in 1969. As compared to the readers of many countries in the East and the West, Chinese readers had the opportunity to get acquainted with Bulgakov’s text rather late. To a certain extent, this “delay” can be explained by both cultural and linguistic peculiarities of the original text, which represented considerable difficulties for translators, and political situation in China. The period of the “cultural revolution” was characterized by a sharp decline of cultural exchange between the USSR and China. Only in 1985, a famous Chinese specialist in Russian
studies and translator Qiang Cheng published the translations of fragments of the first chapter of the novel. The first full-text translation, also made by Qiang Cheng, was released in May 1987 under the title (“The Master and
Margarita”) (ШШМ, 1987).Thus, almost fifty years passed between the completion of work on the novel by the author and the creation of the first Chinese translation. As the first Chinese translation of the novel continues to be popular with readers now, the modern Chinese reader is separated from the time of creating the novel for more than seventy years.
All the varieties of traditionally set aside culturonyms: polionyms, idionyms and xenonyms (Kabakchi, 2001) are presented in the text of “The Master and Margarita”. The greatest aesthetic potential in a literary text have idionyms (words that describe the elements of the culture in the language of the culture) and xenonyms (linguistic units, used to identify specific elements of the external / “foreign” cultures).
The group of idionyms includes Russian original names of the characters of the “Moscow” chapters, Аннушка, Варенька, Наташа, Степа Лиходеев, Иван Николаевич Бездомний, Соков. Another part of the “Moscow” names is represented by xenonymic names. M.A. Bulgakov widely used in these chapters Ukrainian names (Варенуха, Могарич, Шпичкин), which give a certain “trace” of Ukrainian culture in the Russian text. Ukrainian “trace” sends information to readers of the novel about the Kiev period in the life of the author. In “Moscow” chapters real and imaginary anthroponyms of foreign culture (Берлиоз, Дунчель, Майгель) are also presented.
In “Yershalaim” chapters only xenonymic names are presented because these chapters describe the events of the Gospel in the beginning of the I mellinnium BC, taking place in Judea during the reign of Emperor Tiberius - Иешуа, Га-Ноцри, Понтий Пилат, Каифа, Левий
Матвей, Дисмас, Гестас, Вар-раван. Although most of the names in “Yershalaim” chapters are dictated by Gospel story, M.A. Bulgakov changes a bit the traditional sound form of a number of names - Иисус, Матфей, Каиафа. The traditional sound implies the way the names sound in the Russian translation of the Bible. The researchers note that the names created by the author give readers a chance, on the one hand, to draw an analogy with literary and mythological prototypes of the characters, but on the other hand to treat characters with such names as separate types of characters (Kovalev, 1993; Yablokov, 2001).
A cluster of xenonymic names is represented in the chapter “The Great Ball at Satan” which is defined by the plot: Иоганн Штраус, господин Жак, госпожа Тофана, Гай Цезарь Калигула, Мессалина, император Рудольф. Using foreign anthroponyms is consistent with the idea of the novel that evil is universal and independent of time and place. There is a character among the participants of the infernal ball whose name-idionym is a bearer of the Russian cultural memory and correlates with the notion of evil. This name is Малюта Скуратов.
A special place among anthroponyms in the novel is taken by names Воланд and his demonic entourage. In studies of M.A. Bulgakov’s works it was noted that image of Woland has several prototypes (Sokolov, 1996; Yanovskaya, 1987). I.V. Stalin and V.I. Lenin are often referred to real-world prototypes as to the mythical prototypes they are Satan, Lucifer, Mephistopheles. It is known that the name Воланд was borrowed by M.A. Bulgakov from Goethe’s poem “Faust”, where it is used as one of the names of Satan. Character Koroviev-Fagot serves a clear representative of carnival culture and has a number of mythological and literary prototypes. His name has a different interpretation of the origin - from mythological to literary. The name
Азазелло is an italianate form of the name of demon of Jewish mythology Azazel, the evil spirit of desert. The name of black cat Бегемот is borrowed from the biblical mythology (the name of the demon helper of Satan, the demon of stomach desire). Anthroponym Гелла (the name of the female vampire) is due to several mythologies - Greek (the daughter of the goddess of Netheda), German (the embodiment of hell and death) and Norman (the goddess of the underworld). The name Абадонна goes back to the Old Testament Hebrew name of a fallen angel, a demon of war and the forerunner of death.
The name of the protagonist Мастер in the text of the novel is devoided of cultural connotations and has uncertainty. The absence of a specific name of the main character implies the closeness of the character to the author of the literary text. The anthroponym Маргарита is perfectly correlated phonosemantically with the name Мастер in the title and the text. The main female character has several prototypes, including the heroine of “Faust”.
The characters and their actions are closely connected with the space of the novel. Numerous culturonyms (toponyms, in this case) creating the urban flavor of Moscow, in detail reproduce a map of Moscow of the time of creating the novel: Патриаршие пруды, Спиридоновка, Садовое кольцо, Садовая улица, Арбат, Воробьевы горы, Александровский сад. The capital of Judea Yershalaim, the prototype of which is Jerusalem, is described by M.A. Bulgakov with topographical accuracy which is achieved by using multiple sources: город Гамала, дворец Ирода Великого.
Thus, multidimensional cultural memory, which has a variety of topographical and chronological parameters is presented in anthroponyms and toponyms of “The Master and Margarita” . The availability of this information
in the text of the novel allows the reader to obtain various information depending on the level of their own reserves of information. Cultural information I memory transmitted through culturonyms also serves as an important source of aesthetic potential of the novel.
When translated into Chinese cultural information component of the text of “The Master and Margarita” is a serious translation problem caused by objective cultural differences. To reproduce anthroponyms and toponyms the author of the first Chinese translation of the novel Qiang Cheng mainly uses symbolic way of translation, involving such techniques of translation as transliteration and transcription. Since writing system of the Chinese language has a hieroglyphic nature, then for translation of Russian names by means of the Chinese language only transcription can be used. Russian and Chinese anthroponyms have different structures, which suggest that anthroponyms transcribed in Chinese translation are naturally perceived by the readers as “foreign” names of persons irrespective of their status in the original text. However, their original belonging to different cultures is not differentiated.
Anthroponyms and toponyms from “Yershalaim” chapters in Chinese translation are mainly presented by anthroponyms of the Chinese translation of the Bible. Author’s modifications of the names of persons from this group were not introduced in the translation. For example, anthroponym Понтий Пилат is equivalent to Щ Ш^; ЛевийМатвей - Щ ^ ЦЖ; Дисмас - ^ ^ ЦШ; город Гамала - ЩЩШ Ш, etc.
Culturonyms from “Moscow” chapters were also transcribed in the Chinese translation. Степан Лиходеев - Алоизий
Могарыч - Шпичкин - Ш
$Ж&; Массолит - ^^^; Арбат - Н^Е #; Дом Грибоедова - The
names Воланд, Коровьев, Азазелло, Маргарита
were also transcribed in the Chinese text: ^^Ш, In some cases, the translator creates culturonyms with semantic equivalents in translation Мастер - (great teacher, a
specialist), Бездомный - (the man who
has no family), Елеонская гора - (olive
hill). A relatively small group of culturonyms were translated into Chinese using a combination of symbolic and semantic ways of translation, Марк Крысобой - М ИЖ'КЦЙ. The name Марк is translated by transcription (Ц~&) and then in the name it is explained that this is a man who catches rats.
Thus, transcribing culturonyms in Chinese translation allows to introduce roughly the sound of “foreign” proper names, which makes the units in translation culturally marked, indicates that they belong to the “foreign” culture, but does not allow to introduce cultural information of the original text. As the Russian and Chinese cultures do not show significant similarities, then cultural substitute or adaptation, in this case are not effective. The Chinese translator takes the path of cultural interpretation (explanation). Cultural interpretations include three main types: translation comments in footnotes, translation comments at the end of the text, as well as comments within the text.
The commentary on the name Понтий Пилат is felicitous. The comment not only contains information about the real person having this name (“Pontius Pilate [...] lived in the I century. From 26 to 30 AD was a prosecutor of the Roman emperor in Judea, where wielded immense power and led the army. According to the Bible, Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus to death on the Cross”), but also information about the symbolic use of anthroponym (“The name of Pilate in the classical works of Marxism-Leninism symbolizes brutality and hypocrisy”), as well as information about the author’s interpretation of the image of Pontius Pilate (“The author of the
novel changed the image of Pilate as opposed to actual historical events”). Anthroponym Левий Матей, is accompanied with a commentary that the person having this name was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus Christ, the author of one of the Gospels and worked as a tax collector. Often the translator indicates the source language of the name. For example, Михаил Александрович Берлиоз has a phonetic match ЙДШ
and commentary to help readers form certain cultural associations: “This name is different from the ordinary Russian surnames as is written in Russian the same way as French composer’s surname”. The translator comments on the name Воланд saying that the name is taken from the German language, and has a meaning “terrible beast” and “devil”. The translator also often explains the meaning of the word a proper name originated from. Латунский - Ш ШЖЖ: The commentary notes that the name is associated with the word “латунь”- brass, which shines like gold, but is not real gold. The translator gives explanations to the names of the representatives of Russian culture. Дом Грибоедова - fé-ММВД Ш: “A.S. Griboyedov (1795-1829) is a Russian dramatist. His comedy “Woe from Wit” is a wicked satire on the society contemporary to the author. Belinsky called the comedy the first Russian realistic comedy”. Thus, the translator tries to compensate for the inevitable loss of cultural information in his translation through cultural commentary.
Conclusion
Literary text has a wide range of functions to be performed, organized on the basis of the principles of complementarity and hierarchy, which makes this text a regular object of interdisciplinary research. As culturally significant literary text regularly generates textual variants in “their” and “foreign” cultures, which provide imitation capability and repeatability
of the original text, then one of the important aspects of the study of the text is the aspect of translation. Literary text is an indivisible and interdependent form-and-content unity. The content of the text is defined as a heterogeneous information complex, which includes cognitive, cultural and aesthetic types of information. Cultural type of information, which includes cultural memory, is multifunctional, and can perform both cognitive and aesthetic functions. Introducing cultural information of the original text in cross-language translation is a prerequisite
for creating high-quality translation that is built into the cultural grid of the target language. Lack of a common cultural information / memory with native speakers of the source language and target language requires the use of effective strategies for involving cultural substitution, cultural adaptation and cultural commentary of culturonyms of the source text in the target text. Using different strategies of cultural substitution, cultural adaptation and cultural commentary depends on the degree of cultural differences between source language and target language.
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о (Ш#, 1987^) о
Культурная информация/память и эстетическая информация в художественном переводе
В.А. Разумовская
Сибирский федеральный университет Россия 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
В данной статье рассматриваются вопросы хранения культурной информации и культурной памяти, а также эстетической информации в художественном тексте. Особое внимание уделяется различным видам культуронимов и стратегиям реконструкции данных единиц в переводе. Материалом исследования стал роман М.А. Булгакова «Мастер и Маргарита» и первый перевод данного романа на китайский язык.
Ключевые слова: культурная информация, культурная память, эстетическая информация. культурное достояние, текстовые решетки, культуроним, антропоним, топоним, культурное толкование.
