Linguistic features of comic texts translation (based on the works of M. Twain and O. Henry )

Linguistic features of comic texts translation (based on the works of M. Twain and O. Henry )

1 Theoretical overview of linguistic features of comic texts translation

1.1 The notion of translation in linguistics

Translation is a complex and multifaceted kind of human activity. Although they usually talk about translating "from one language to another," but in reality, in the translation process, it is not just the replacement of one language with another. Different cultures, different personalities, different ways of thinking, different literature, different eras, different levels of development, different traditions and attitudes collide in translation. Culturologists, ethnographers, psychologists, historians, literary critics are interested in translation, and different aspects of translation activity can be the object of study in the framework of the relevant sciences. At the same time, the science of translation - translation studies - can distinguish cultural, cognitive, psychological, literary and other aspects [3, p.24]

However, the traditional idea that languages ​​play the main role in translation has received serious scientific justification, and linguistic theories of translation play a leading role in modern translation studies. It should be noted that the inclusion of translation in the sphere of interests of linguistics occurred relatively recently and at the same time significant difficulties had to be overcome. Until now, in most fundamental works on linguistics there is not even a mention of translation as a possible object of linguistic research, although R. Jacobson already emphasized that "the widespread practice of interlanguage communication, especially translation activity, should be constantly monitored by linguistic science."

The absence of interest in translation problems in many linguists in the first half of the 20th century was facilitated by the prevalence of structuralism ideas in linguistic science. In an effort to provide an objective description of the language, to bring linguistics closer to the “exact” sciences, linguists readily accepted Saussure’s call to study the language “in himself and for himself”, confining himself to the field of “internal linguistics” or otherwise “microlinguistics”. Achieving scientific accuracy and objectivity, linguists focused on those aspects of the linguistic structure that can be directly observed, measured, counted, conclusively described and classified: the sound, morphemic and lexical composition of the language, its syntactic structure, syntagmatic and paradigmatic connections of its units, their compatibility, distribution in texts (distribution), frequency of use, etc. As a result, linguistics has achieved significant success in the scientific analysis of structural organization and many languages [4, p.11]

However, the structuralist approach to language learning logically implied the need to abandon the study of the substantive side of the language. Therefore, any judgments about meanings were obviously considered unscientific, “mentalistic”, and there was no place for semantics in the science of language. For the same reason, the proposal turned out to be the maximum unit of language that was analyzed, since larger (speech) units  texts  could not be objectively analyzed without resorting to their semantic structure. It is clear that such linguistics was not able to deal with translation problems, the essence of which is to transfer the contents of a foreign language text by means of another language.

1.2 The role of literary text translation and its peculiarities

A literary text is the result of a creative process, the embodiment of a creative design; the work of art has a high information richness, presenting to the reader various types of information factual, emotionally incentive, conceptual. Literary texts reflect the linguistic and national picture of the world, both of an individual person (author) and of the people who speak this language as a whole.

In any culture, texts are multifunctional, i.e. the same text performs not one, but several functions. The combination of an artistic function with a magical, moral, philosophical, political one is an integral feature of the social functioning of a particular literary text. Along with the fulfillment of a specific artistic task, the text should also have moral, political, philosophical, journalistic functions.

And vice versa, in order to fulfill a certain, for example, philosophical role, the text must also realize an aesthetic function. “Every literary text can fulfill its social function only if there is aesthetic communication in the contemporary collective.”

Currently, studies of literary text are conducted in a number of disciplines. Problems associated with various aspects of its generation and perception are developed not only in linguistics, but also in other fields of knowledge, such as psychology, psycholinguistics, methods of teaching foreign languages, linguoculturology, etc [5, p.24]

A complex, diverse approach is caused by a certain shift in emphasis in the study of the text: it began to be considered not only as a source of language data, but also as the main unit of communication, an individual speech implementation of a language system, inextricably linked with thought activity, inseparable from the person that generates or perceives it.

Translation of a literary text is a complex and multifaceted type of human activity. Different cultures, different personalities, different ways of thinking, different literature, different eras, different levels of development, different traditions and attitudes collide in translation. Despite the fact that the science of translation is relatively young, the theoretical work in the field of translation is very numerous, the history of European culture there are many attempts to expound the theory of translation.

According to the point of view of V.N. Komissarova, literary translation is the translation of works of fiction. Works of fiction are contrasted with all other speech works due to the fact that for all of them the dominant is one of the communicative functions, namely the artistic-aesthetic, or poetic function of the language [6, p.85]

The main goal of any work of art is in aesthetic impact, in creating an artistic image. This aesthetic orientation distinguishes artistic speech from other acts of verbal communication, in which the goal is informativeness, informative informativeness.

A distinctive feature of literary translation from all other types of translation (for example, synchronous, scientific and technical) is that the text of the translation belongs to works with artistic merit. In other words, a type of translation activity is called literary translation, the main task of which is to generate a translation of a speech work in a language that can have an artistic and aesthetic effect on the reader. For example, A. Lilova notes: “The difference between fiction and scientific text is not only in form, but also in content, which determines the various ways of their reconstruction in translation.” Figurative thinking is an indispensable element of the art of the word, it is thanks to it that artistic reality is created in which the word, the main component of literature, its primary element, is not identical with the word in everyday, everyday use. Imagery is always inherent in human thinking, the need to convey it arises in the translation of any text, even scientific. For literary translation, i.e. to transmit a work of art, always subjective, in another language, the concept of “creative personality of a translator” is of paramount importance: “It is known that the mere mention of the creative personality of a translator alarms many. But she should not scare anyone. After all, we are talking, expressed in the language of linguistics, about a system of deviations from the original text, which, expressed in the language of literary criticism, goes back to certain creative principles, to a specific approach to translation problems and, therefore, to a certain method [7, p.24]