Стоянова И. Ф.

 Стоянова И. Ф.

(г. Кишинев, Молдова)

THE USE OF KEYWORDS IN FANTASY TRANSLATION

 

The keyword is a cue with which the secrets of a literary work are revealed. It is the most important element in the context as it carries the main idea and message of the author and may help to identify themes and narrative progression or differentiate among various characters. Keywords are distinguished by the variability of their semantic structure; in fiction, they acquire a polysemantic nature, depicting both different shades and states of the hero(s), and the most important events described in the work.

In literature, keywords play a two-folded role: to allow the reader to understand accurately the content of the work, while for the authors to adhere the narration to the writing plan. Usually, such kind of list of words (keys) focuses on a certain narrative concept or picture.

As lexical units, keywords have several essential features that distinguish them from the other types of vocabulary items: a high degree of repetition of words in the text; the frequency of their use; the ability of a key lexical unit to embrace the information of the text; the correspondence to the correlation of the text’s content levels. Additional characteristics of keywords as semantic complexity and their word-formation/derivation relations come into play [1, p. 22–23].

Keywords are particularly significant in the process of literary translation, the fantasy genre being the topic of our research. In fact, by detecting the keywords, the translator may use them to support the translation process itself. Keywords as a definite form of repetition may generate lexical nets that contribute to the lexical cohesion of the text. To render this type of cohesion in the translation process appropriately, lexical relationships need to be settled [4].

The keywords translation should show particular consistency due to their position in the original text. “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” by J. K. Rowling (the object of our analysis) is a fictional novel about magic, wizardry,  and fairy creatures, here the lexical unit wizard is considered to be the key one, being examined in detail.

The investigation showed that the keyword wizard, as a repetition, occurs in any part of the text and does not have a stable, rigidly fixed position in it; the quantitative distribution of wizard and its derivatives fluctuates throughout the text of the novel.  In the original text, the word wizard, its variants, and derivatives are characterized by a variable frequency: wizard(s) (69), wizardry (6), wizarding (6). While examining the translations performed by I. Oransky, M. Litvinova,  it was found out that the Russian equivalent of English wizard has the  following frequency:  волшебник  (62),  волшебный  (4), колдун (1),  колдовство (2),  чародей/ство (6),  магический (5),  магия (23).

When the concordance of lines is examined according to the message, a number of positively evaluating adjectives (best, great, greatest, famous) in contrast to a single negatively evaluating one dark can be mentioned, e.g.: Professor Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945…[5]. – Профессор знаменит своей победой над темным волшебником Грин-де- Валъдом в 1945 году…[2]. This fact rendered the idea on the semantic prosody of the word in this text: wizards may represent the good or evil side and there is much competition going on between them.

In Russian, волшебство is defined as ‘действия волшебника, чарующее действие кого-либо’ with a positive impact; колдовство – ‘таинственная способность людей причинять различный вред, насылать или снимать порчу’, having a negative impact [3], e.g.:  Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards [5]. – У каждого из них есть своя древняя история, и из каждого выходили выдающиеся волшебники и волшебницы [2].  To mention that a witch (defined as ‘a woman thought to have magic powers, especially evil ones, popularly depicted as wearing a black cloak and pointed hat and flying on a broomstick’) is translated into Russian as волшебницы with a positive semantic value; the idea might be explained by the general atmosphere of Hogwarts as a school of good wizards (to remember quantitative distribution of Houses: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw vs Slytherin).

The original adjectival key unit magical as ‘the spirit of something being beautiful and delightful in a way that seems remote from daily life’ found its one-to-one correspondence in Russian волшебный, e.g: “... but did Snape expect him to remember everything in "One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi"?[5]. –...но неужели Снегг рассчитывал на то, что он наизусть выучит «Тысячу волшебных растений и грибов»? [2].

Therefore,  the whole amount of  semantic and stylistic (ex)changes of key lexical units, numerous examples of which have been studied, being natural and elegant, represent an index of good taste and high literary skill of J. K. Rowling, masterly and successfully rendered by the target language translators.

 

ЛИТЕРАТУРА

1. Методы и приёмы работы с ключевыми словами текста на уроках русского языка и литературы : сборник методических рекомендаций / Сост. О. В. Храмова. – Биробиджан : ОГАОУ ДПО «ИПКПР», 2017. – 48 с.

2. Роулинг, Дж. Гарри Поттер и волшебный камень. / Дж. Роулинг. – Пер. с англ. И. Оранского. – Москва : РОСМЭН, 2002. – 283 с.

3. Толковый словарь Ожегова. [Электронный ресурс]. – Режим доступа : https://gufo.me/dict/ozhegov (дата обращения:10.10.2021).

4. Čermáková, A. Translating Children’s Literature: Some Insights From Corpus Stylistics [Electronic resource] / A. Čermáková. – Режим доступа : https://www.scielo.br/j/ides/a/qvGfsGbxKTXRnrLJzKV mJkf/?format=pdf&lang=en (дата обращения:17.10.2021).

5.       Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone / J. K. Rolwing. –London : Bloomsbury, 1997. – 309 p.