Imagery in Translation

wanted to stay and see your trial. You can imagine what a timewe've had with reporters and people. You don't think it awful of her, do you? And listen, there's something else. Can that police­man hear? It's this. You remember that awful old man Maltravers. Well, you've probably seen, he's Home Secretary now. He's been round to Mamma in the most impossible Oppenheim kind of way, and said that if she'd marry him he could get you out. Of course, he's obviously been reading books. But Mamma thinks it's prob­ably true, and she wants to know how you feel about it. She rath­er feels the whole thing's rather her fault, really, and, short of going to prison herself, she'll do anything to help. You can't imag­ine Mamma in prison, can you? Well, would you rather get out now and her marry Maltravers, or wait until you do get out and marry her yourself? She was rather definite about it."

Paul thought of Professor Silenius's "In ten years she will be worn out," but he said:

"I'd rather she waited if you think she possibly can."

"I though you'd say that, Paul. I'm so glad. Mamma said: 'I won't say I don't know how I shall be able to make up to him for all this, because 1 think he knows I can/ Those were her words. I don't suppose you will get more than a year or so, will you?"

"God Lord, I hope not," said Paul.

His sentence of seven years' penal servitude was rather a blow. "In ten years she will be worn out," he thought as he drove in the prison van to Blackstone Goal.

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Mark the words and expressions that may need comments or references. Compile a glossary of them.

• Find some information about Evelyn Waugh and his works. Look through the contents of Decline and Fall.

- Measure the style of the text in terms of both stylistic

devices and the choice of linguistic units.

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• Study the vocabulary in the text and mark the lexical prob­ lems for translation.

• Study the syntax of the text and its logical functions.

• Outline the rhythmic pattern of the text.

• Look for some Russian literary parallel to Waugh's style. Try Bulgakov.

• Complete the Glossary with Russian counterparts.

• Work on the choice of words and syntactical structures in Russian.

• Check the results of translation with special attention to the appropriate reconstruction of the overt and covert irony in the source text.

• Read the Russian version aloud to feel the rhythm of the text.

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Imagery in Translation

PROSE UNIT 4:

TRANSLATING/. D. SALINGER INTO RUSSIAN

Introductory Notes

Jerome David Salinger, an American novelist and she story writer, is world-known for his novel The Catcher in the 1 (1951), a modern variant of the ancient story of initiation. Its m character, Holden Caulfield, runs away from his boarding-sch to New York, where he faces many challenges, dangers and pr< lems.

American critics say that serious interest in Salinger's w< was slight until The Catcher in the Rye "occasioned a bela deluge of critical comment." The literary world of the USA scol< him for social irresponsibility, obfuscation, and obsession w Eastern philosophy and religion. Yet the fact is that his only n< el and a number of short stories made his name realised as thai a real artist.

Although Salinger has a good sense of humour, his vis: of life is of utmost seriousness. Most of his works, though i without a comic touch, are serious, if not sad. His major stor started from 1955, with Franny and Zooey presenting the Gl saga, his most sophisticated work.

Yet The Catcher in the Rye made him popular. The st< of an adolescent boy is an odyssey, a search and a series of capes — a quest. The odyssey begins on a Saturday afternoor Pencey Prep and ends at the New York Zoo on Monday aft noon; though Holden tells his story some months later in Calif nia, where he has been seeing a psychiatrist.

The central conflict of the novel is the traditional one 1 tween innocence and experience. Holden Caulfield is innoci but not altogether naive; he has some knowledge of evil thou

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not himself corrupted by it. More than that, he has a mes-c sense, he wants to save people from sin, their own as well e world's. But like most messiahs, he is a failure: he learns t is impossible to be a catcher in the rye, to save people from ig the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

The strongest of Holden's aversions is that to the "phony .' Everybody who pretends somebody he is not is a phony lolden. Yet he feels some sympathy towards those phonies pretend in defence. Sometimes the boy overreacts, for the :s of evil are eternal and inescapable. By his own words, "You i ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when re not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' : under your nose."

This book by Salinger is often compared to the greatest xican odyssey of initiation, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. books are similar in their narrative framework, and their col-ial style, in partly using the real speech and partly inventing ;cial language, that of adolescence.

In a way, the novel is partly autobiographical, for Holden he reputation of a writer in his school, and other people have gnised his literary talents and tastes. It is a striking detail n a teenager seriously admits that his favourite is not baseball Ireat Gatsby.

For translation, Salinger's novel makes a great challenge s language, which is not easy to deal with. Salinger's ear for )quialisms is perfect, even when he invents some or makes :r functions for others. Those personal words, like phony or iam, ox I mean it, or numerous collocations will cause a trans-■ headache. The Russian translation by Rita Rait-Kovaleva become a classic since the sixties, yet it represents a certain jlator position, tastes and preferences that may have changed e then. The text in translation becomes as if softer, more liter-■ather than colloquial, and somewhat less tensed.