Imagery in Translation
E
XERCISES
FOR COMPARISON
Find out more about the writer and his art of s.tory-tel ing. Look through some other stories by him.
This story is unfinished: think about its completion : accordance with the main character. Try to answer the questic why Lawrence left it unfinished.
Pick up the words and proper names which need con ments or references. Make up a glossary of them. Consult dictic naries and reference books for more information. Note how tr traditions of the names differ in English and in Russian.
Study the vocabulary, syntax and style of the text; decic upon the peculiarities of the diction. Compare it with the choic of words in the translation.
Read both texts aloud to feel and compare the rhythm < them. How does the inevitable syntactical transformation infli ence the rhythmic image of the story in translation?
Task for translation: Things
THINGS
They were true idealists, from New England. Several yeai before the war, they met and married; he a tall, keen-eyed youn man from Connecticut, she a smallish, demure, Puritan-lookin young woman from Massachusetts. They both had a little mone; Not much, however. Still — they were free. Free!
But what is money? All one wishes to do is' to live a fu and beautiful life. In Europe, of course, right at the fountain-hea of tradition.
Therefore the two idealists, who were married in New He ven, sailed at once to Paris: Paris of the old days. They had studio apartment on the Boulevard Montparnasse, and they Ы came real Parisians, in the old, delightful sense, not in the moc
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Практикум
по художественному переводу
I
,
vulgar. It was the shimmer of the pure impressionists, Moneti
his
followers, the world seen in terms of pure light, light )ken
and unbroken. How lovely! How lovely the nights, the er,
the mornings in the old streets and by the flower-stalls and :
book-stalls,
the afternoons up on Montmartre or in the Tuil-ies,
the evenings on the boulevards!
They had both painted but not desperately. Art had not taken :m by the throat, and they did not take Art by the throat. They inted: that's all. They knew people — nice people, if possible, >ugh one had to take them mixed. And they were happy.
Yet it seems as if human beings must set their claws in mething. To be "free," to be "living a full and beautiful life," u must, alas, be attached to something. Human beings are all les seeking something to clutch, something up which to climb ivards the necessary sun. But especially the idealist. He is a le, and he needs to clutch and climb. And he despises the man ю is а тете potato, or turnip, or lump of wood.
Our idealists were frightfully happy, but they were all the ne reaching out for something to cotton on to. At first, Paris is enough. They explored Paris thoroughly. And they learned ench till they almost felt like French people, they could speak so glibly.
Still, you know, you never talk French with your soul. And ough it's very thrilling, at first, talking in French to clever enchmen, still, in the long run, it is not satisfying. The endless-clever materialism of the French leaves you cold, gives a sense barrenness and incompatibility with true New England depth. > our two idealists felt.