Головна

THE SENSIBILITY OF TRANSLATION

  1. A Close Translation
  2. Choose suitable translation of English words from Russian ones. Compose sentences with them on the topic of the text
  3. Choose the right translation of the word-combinations given.
  4. Choose the right translation of the word-combinations given.
  5. Choose the right translation of the word-combinations given.
  6. Exercise 2 d), which is for translation from Ukrainian into English, may be found in the Supplementary (at the end of the book).
  7. Exercise 20. Translate into Ukrainian. Pay attention to the translation of Gerunds.
 
 

The reader of this book is only a step away from the moment when she enters a classroom and says "Hello" to a class. What does poetry have to do with that?

If one asks a man in the street how he feels about poetry, the answer will probably be discouraging. Poetry is not entertaining, it requires concentration, and as long as it's difficult to grasp the elusive meaning the majority of people, popular belief about poetry is that it is but for the select few.

The same belief is well reflected in dictionaries. Look up the cluster of 'poetry' and 'poetic' there, and you will see for yourselves. Wordsworth once wrote that the world is too much with us. Today it is as true as ever in the worldwide webs of commerce, advertising, and mass culture. Miriads of words bombard us daily, so we have no time to stop and wonder; we have to skim hastily through and run, run, run. Definitely, cadences of poetry are no longer part of our everyday life. In the rush of prepackaged ideas, the stubborn individualism and refusal to be hurried into the flock that poetry represents are indeed more than unusual.

That is why almost everybody seeks to obtain some poetic license at one time in their lives. Many of us ventured to write poetry at one time in our lives. Have you, Intelligent Reader? Yes, of course, if you care to remember. Was it something you scribbled in your 'privatest' pad when you fell in love with that gorgeous classmate of yours? Thank God, you didn't make a fool of yourself by showing the poem to the addressee! Or, perhaps, it was something you made in jest, out of mere curiosity, just to see if you can produce something which will be funny enough? Whatever it was, poetically you've sinned, dear Reader, haven't you?

This only manifests the innermost desire we all share to create some self-made magic out of such commonplace elements as words, words,words. You wanted to translate your feelings, or emotings, or ideas or whatever into a new and exciting form sanctified by centuries of literary history and several years of drab classroom teaching. It was worth the effort. It always is.

So often my former students tell me that those very special moments in their young lives when they took up writing poetry were the most wonderful. They relished those memories afterwards more than once. So, let's say it's proved that Poetry is Power - to some extent, at least.

1.1 What sense does poetry make?

Curiously, the word poetry is derived from the Greek word 'poieein' meaning 'to make'. That is why the poet is the maker in every sense of the word. Whoever tries writing poetry, or reading and analyzing poetic text, is also a maker. But why should our speech in a foreign language be afraid to rise to poetic speech level? Is it just wishful thinking?

It's not exactly so.

If one really wants to master the target language, one should exercise boldly his or her poetic license birthright, and never be afraid of experimenting with most common words. Speaking a foreign language, especially such as English, may resemble 'poetic diction' for one reason: the speaker, when he or she really thinks aloud, assembles the target language words not automatically, as native speakers most often do, but quite consciously. We are fully aware, almost all the time, of the intricacies involved and of the desired impact on the listener. It is even more so in case of writing in English. The more EFL speakers understand how speech works, and use consciously a plethora of stylistic and syntactic means of expression, the more poetic - so to say - their speech becomes.

When poets are at work, they apply words that carry several meanings, and suggest several more, and join with other words to imply yet further meanings. Word choice, the craft of selecting and joining words to enrich their power to communicate messages, is one of the basic skills of the poet's craft. Isn't the purpose of EFL teachers the same - to enrich students' power to communicate with the help of carefully chosen words? There can never be two answers to this question.

No doubt, the language of poetry is the pinnacle of any literary language. A would-be teacher of English is supposed to know about Anglo-American poets and their work, and to be able to handle poetic texts with a measure of confidence. Handling texts implies understanding the poets' message and language, various devices included.

The experience of the present writer proves that English teachers-to-be are seldom good readers of poetry, be it silent reading or reading aloud. This is a disadvantage to be overcome by some assiduous work during the present course. It is also important, both developmentally and professionally, to be able to render poetic pieces in prose as bits of cultural or linguistic information. So it is going to be reading of poetry, not reading about it. Last but not least, it is worthwhile to brave poetic translation. With this aim in mind, to excel in translation, the course will supply some "how-to's". These are the practical objectives of the present course. The subject matter is going to be good poetry.

1.2 What does it mean, 'good poetry'?

There is a centuries-long debate on the essence of true - or good - poetry. It seems, however, that good poetry is a combination of satisfying sounds, along with sharply focused and structurally organized content.

Here in this country we used to approach poetry in terms of didactic message, thus limiting the list of poetry studied and narrowing our vision of the literary world. Yet at the level of clear-cut didactic message, readers most readily accept poetry. On a more sophisticated level, poetry's message is no longer propaganda-bound or dully didactic. Most gifted authors produce literature that deals with such eternal questions as the value of human life, and other such rub. Poetry of this sort becomes prophetic. Take Hamlet's soliloquy as an example. It belongs to all time.

But it is not often that we reach that level of sophistication, fortunately. We shouldn't talk too wise. In a larger and more common cultural context, poetry normally has but a theme, without carrying this or that didactic message. The closer the theme is to human experience, the greater the abundance of poems is. The most common in poetry (and the most difficult for original expression) is the theme of love. The most powerful drive of human beings, Love has inspired legions of poets in every corner of the world to write sonnets and ballads, rondels and romances.

Good poetry, too, must be concise. Poetic form demands compression. Literature (and poetry, too) is a dialogue between Writer and Reader, an art form whose subject is a vision of humanity and the universe. Unfortunately, many of such dialogues are desperately long! It is most improbable that anyone would want to read a philosophically bent poem of over two thousand lines. Milton's breadth of writing and learning is not very fashionable though not totally unwelcome.

Poetry must be, first and foremost, readable. However, to write eight lines and make the point mysteriously clear is the highest art. A small poem with a message to the world, if it is above the average in terms of language, always speaks volumes. Long-winded dissertations might be written on the basis of some poems which are composed of just four or eight lines. A perfect poem is brief, tightly-focused, and meaningful.

Let us have a look a poem by Emily Dickinson (Text 01), an American poet whose poetry seems to satisfy the conditions on all counts.



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Text 02 | Text 03 | Text 04 | Text 05 | Text 06 | Text 07 | Text 09 | Text 10 | OF BALLADS AND OF BARDS | Text 11 |

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