Ukrainian linguist Leonid Chernovatyi about Ukrainian translation theoretician Oleksandr Finkel

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Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University, Mykolaiv, Ukraine

Theory and Practice of Translation Department

Ukrainian linguist Leonid Chernovatyi about Ukrainian translation theoretician Oleksandr Finkel

Chernova Yu.V.

teacher

Harashchenko T.S.

student

Abstract

translation language parody

The paper deals with the book published by L. Chernovatyi in which he compiled articles and translation works by O. Finkel, having added biographical notes about talented Ukrainian translation theorist and linguist.

Keywords: Leonid Chernovatyi, Oleksandr Finkel, Ukrainian linguist, Ukrainian theoretician, theory of translation, Ivan Franko, Hryhorii Kvitka.

In 2007 Leonid Chernovatyi published the book about history of translation which includes some of the „Oleksandr Finkel As a Forgotten Theorist of Ukrain-most outstanding and important, as for a translator, ian Translation Studies”. It is one of the book series works of Finkel who was a Ukrainian philologist, professor, linguist and translator. He analysed the works and translations by such famous Ukrainian writers as H. Kvitka, I. Franko, T. Shevchenko, J.W. von Goethe, M. Lermontov and others.

Oleksander Finkel (1899-1968) was engaged in teaching for forty years, at the same time he was involved in scientific work. All his life Oleksandr Finkel was dedicated to languages, namely Ukrainian, Russian, English and French. In a brief section of Finkel's biography Chernovatyi gives a list of works written by him. His first article on artistic translation was published in 1922 when he was a student. The linguistic legacy of Finkel has more than 130 works, among which are textbooks and articles on the Russian literary language, textbooks on Russian for primary and secondary schools, methodological articles on the basics of language teaching, a number of articles on Ukrainian and its stylistics and many other works that deal with translation. All theoretical principles of translation developed by Finkel were applied in practice by him. He translated 154 Shakespeare's sonnets into Russian, but they were published only ten years after Finkel's death. One of the accomplishments of this versatile person is a collection of poetic parodies „Parnassus on End”, written along with Ester Paperna and Oleksandr Rosenberg. The peculiarity of this book is retelling of three children`s poems with a parodic preservation of the style of famous poets, from Homer and Dante to Maiakovskii and Tvardovskii. Finkel characterized the intentions of writing this collection in this way: “We were not parodists and did not want to be them, we were stylists, and even had the cognitive goal” [4]. We should consider some of Finkel's works given in the book by Chernovatyi “Oleksandr Finkel As a Forgotten Theorist of Ukrainian Translation Studies”

In 1929 Finkel's book on translation was published after which translation studies was divided into theory and practice and now they are used under the single term “theory and practice of translation” by universities and philologists. Chernovatyi understands the term “practice” as a professional experience and “theory” as a professional credo. He also notes that Finkel writes already in the introduction of his book about the importance of knowledge of theory, methodology, history and criticism of translation.

The preface to Chernovatyi's book provides us with an explanation that the theory models the process and structure of the translation describing its steps and levels. The theory studies the way translator's mind works, how changes occur in a text during a transition from one language to another.

The technique is intended to teach „the art of translation“. Usually this applied field uses a specific pair of languages and provides with a choice of means that are necessary to achieve certain goals in translation.

History studies the process of developing translation from the beginning and up to now: who, where and when translated this or that text, what methods they used, and what mistakes they made. A necessary condition for translation is criticism that provides with an assessment of the quality of translation products.

Finkel's book “The Theory and Practice of Translation” (1929) was not left out of attention of the figures who adverted to the basics of translation. M. Zerov not only wrote a review of the book, but also expressed his opinion regarding the “clarity of the language of translation”, which was slightly different from the author's opinion. M. Rylskyi considered the work by Finkel as valuable, but at some moments he shared the view of Zerov. R. Herzfeld was tough in his evaluation of Finkel's book stating that there is no theory and practice. One of Finkel's students related that after reading the professor's textbook, he found some mistakes, inaccuracies in wording and poor examples there. And he decided to come to the professor with a list of his remarks. Finkel listened to him attentively, wrote everything down, and afterwards added that the student had not read carefully and he could have found more errors. However, criticism is not only praise, but also an identification of shortcomings. The main thing is to accept criticism correctly as Finkel did.

In his work “On Some Problems in Theory of Translation” (1939) Finkel supplements the book he wrote 10 years before, “Theory and Practice of Translation”. He revised his statements, explicated in the previous book, and looked at them from another angle. At the beginning of his work Finkel notes that the universal and full book about theoretical problems of translation has not been published yet. A small number of written works about translation and the experience of the translators themselves will not resolve a number of issues. The author says that as “from a hundred rabbits you will not make an elephant, so with a dozen articles you will not build a theory of translation” [1, 228]. Finkel admits that this article does not claim to fill in all the omissions in the theory of translation and answer all questions concerning the problems of it but it will outline the ways to solve some of these problems. Finkel writes that it is impossible “to develop a single translation theory for all epochs, languages, literary genres and styles” [1, 253].

One of the problems a translator faces in the translation process is preserving the stylistic features of the text. Finkel writes that we can solve this problem by responding to 3 questions: “what is being translated, for whom and why is it being translated” [1, 229]. But the original text can be from one epoch and it must be translated for another, it means the necessity to adapt the original to another readership with another ideology. This is the second problem that translators solve in different ways. As Finkel notes, “the conscious effect is made on the reader, for that purpose the original text is more or less significantly worked up” [1, 229]. Changes can be either small and neutral or colossal, when instead of a translation translator's work turns into their own piece. Finkel narrates about the opposition of form and content, stylistics and theme. Perfect translation does not happen, and in any case something is omitted from the original. The linguist emphasizes three types of translation referring to the words of Tycho Mommsen. The first type is a motionless translation when the content is preserved, but the artistic form is lost. “Original creativity in someone else's style” is the second type, but Finkel considers it to be more imitation than translation. And the third type is stylistic one that accurately conveys both form and content. Despite this, the translator's desire to be precise leads to “displacements” in thematic and stylistic terms.

Moreover Finkel considers the definitions of “artistic” and “inartistic” translation. Firstly, he raises the question whether the translation of an artistic work is always of that kind, and the same is applied to inartistic translation. As the matter of fact, historical and geographical works, oratorical speeches and science-fiction literature are not artless.

Secondly, he proposes to replace these concepts with the terms “prose translation” and “poetic translation”. Both types are a part of the translation theory, and each of them has its own specific features and correspondingly the methods applied in the translation. But they are not absolutely different phenomena.

Finkel draws his audience's attention to concepts that are often misunderstood: what is the difference between “accuracy”, “adequacy” and “literality” in translation? Literality contradicts accuracy [1, 252]. He bases his explanation on such an example “Gallia est om- nis divisa in partes tres” [1, 252]. The translation “Галлия есть вся разделенная в части три” (Gaul is all divided into parts three) is an example of literality, and “Вся Галлия разделенная на три части”( All Gaul is divided into three parts) is accuracy. Concerning the notion of “adequacy” of the translation, Finkel accepts the definition of Professor Smirnov that “translation is considered to be adequate if all the intentions of the author are rendered” [1, 252].

Besides Finkel was interested in the issue of author's translation, which no one had brought up before him although this topic is compelling, because who else but an author should be the best translator of his works. In fact he knows better in what way to convey the sense from one language to another. Accordingly, in his work “H.F. Kvitka Being the Translator of His Own Works” (1929) Finkel analyzes the translations of the Ukrainian writer, studies the methods that Kvitka used and provides an assessment of the translations. Kvitka translated eight short stories, four of which under the pseudonym V.N.S. The writer took the translations for the simple reason that he was not satisfied with the translations of his works by others finding such translations “poor”. The difficulty of the translation is in the difference between the Russian and Ukrainian languages. As Kvitka wrote in his letters, it can be strong, sonorous, smooth in one language, but ineffective and cold in another one [1, 189]. Finkel analyses translations of single words, examples of folk wisdom, rhythmic and rhyming fragments, poems and songs, he also compares Ukrainian and Russian syntax. In general, Kvitka used different translation approaches for each case. But the main ones were the following:

literal translation from Ukrainian into Russian;

transcription of Ukrainian words in order to preserve the Ukrainian national peculiarities. In some cases Kvitka gave an explanation of them;

usage of equivalents in Russian;

omission of a number of words and expressions that will be incomprehensible and sometimes offensive to Russian readers.

Hryhorii Kvitka strictly followed the original while the process of translating, and in his letters to Pletnyov about translation he wrote that he “had not translated but copied word for word (as it stands), without the slightest change of word order or retelling in another way” [1, 213].

On the basis of his article “H.F. Kvitka Being the Translator of His Own Works” Finkel writes another article “On the Author's Translation”(1962), in which he further develops the theme of this kind of translation and its meaning precisely for theory of translation. Finkel systematizes his article proceeding from the preamble to the matters raised in his first article about Kvitka: the reasons for the translations of Kvitka's own works, vocabulary, the reproduction of local peculiarities, idiomatic and syntactic phenomena, improvement of the translation. So in the part dealing with the reasons that made Kvitka translate his own works, Finkel writes that apart from dissatisfaction with other expert's translations, Kvitka also wanted to prove that the Ukrainian language is suitable for belles-lettres, and even the best Russian translation is not able to convey “its beauty”. Finkel explains the significant difference between the translator-author and the usual translator. While they both have the same goals, each of them has its own approach. The translator-author reinterprets his work. The remake becomes “an integral part of the author's translation”. In conclusion Finkel states that “the unification of the author and translator in one person” [1, 324] allows to approach the solution to some theoretical questions.

Finkel further proceeds from such a phenomenon as translator-author to the study of the translation practice of Ivan Franko, who was in fact not only a scientist, prose writer, playwright and poet, but also both a practical and theoretical translator. Due to his 40-year-old active translation practice, the Ukrainian reader got to know the ancient literature, Western European literature, Slavic literature and folklore of various countries. Ivan Franko said that “rendering of poems of foreignspeaking countries, poems of different ages and nations via the native language enriches the soul of the whole nation” [2]. Russian literature and Nikolai Nekrasov had a special significance for Franko as Nekrasov was “the greatest poet of Russian literature” for the author. Therefore it is not surprising that the work of the former influenced the latter. This is the reason for Finkel's article “Ivan Franko Is a Translator of Works by Nekrasov” (1956). The task of the article is to study Franko's translations in terms of the development of Ukrainian translation craft, and to answer the question whether Franko's translations are accurate and adequate. Franko's choice of works for translation was dictated by his ideological and aesthetic views. He chose what “sounded in the tone of his creative vein” [1, 264]. Besides Franko was interested in theoretical issues: in what way to translate and what translation can be considered good. He carefully approached the translation and always knew that an accurate rendering of the content needs an accurate reproduction of the language means of the original text. Franko knowingly chose what needed to be changed or omitted. And often he was guided in his choice by whether this or that fragment or expression has “a social idea”. He wanted to present the works by Nekrasov to Ukrainian readers in all ideological and thematic orientation of theirs, excluding those moments that did not match this idea. Finkel draws attention to one of the most important questions of theory and practice of translation, namely the preservation of national peculiarities, and in what way Franko could solve this question. The national peculiarities are conveyed through idiomatic expressions, proper names, ethnographic phenomena and many other ways. Sometimes what is peculiar to Russian life is not alien to Ukrainian one, in such cases there are no difficulties in translating. Ivan Franko used different methods in order to convey the phenomena of national peculiarities, which, undoubtedly, challenge translation: from translation-transcription to the search for equivalents. Finkel writes about these and other methods in his article providing examples. He also studies in what way changes in a verse composition lead to syntactic changes. Some of Franko's most notable divergences from the original text are found in the translated poetry. He always tried to preserve the metric of the original, thereby bringing to the Ukrainian poetry new imagery forms and narrative techniques. But as Finkel shows, Franko's flaws occurred when he changed the verse organization. Nevertheless, Finkel responds positively to the question of the accuracy of Franko's translations. Ivan Franko brought Nekrasov's poems with all their richness and ideological content to Ukrainian readers.

The book by Chernovatyi also contains four more works by Finkel, which deal with the translations of certain literary pieces. So, in the article “Wanderer's Nightsong” by Goethe in the Russian Translations”(1966) Finkel compares the translations of the poems by Goethe accomplished by M. Lermontov, I. Annenskii, V. Briusov, and B. Pasternak. Finkel analyzes the translations on the lexical, semantic, intonation and syntactic levels, besides metrics and rhymes. Finkel's task is to set out “objective criteria in the assessment of translations” [1, 327].

Since William Shakespeare's “Sonnet LXVI” was translated many times into Russian, it is of great interest to Finkel as a theoretical translator. A comparative analysis of several translations of one work gives an opportunity to answer the question on the way accuracy and adequacy of the translation are achieved. Finkel writes that neither the rhythm and melodic, nor the composition, syntactic structure and vocabulary of the sonnet present difficulties in the translation. Only Shakespeare's use of antitheses and polysemantic words present a challenge. The translator must achieve the simplicity, clarity and precision, expressed in the structure, syntax, semantics and vocabulary of the sonnet. N. Gerbel, F. Chervinskii, M. Chaikovskii, B. Pasternak, O. Rumer, and S. Marshak took up this challenge. Accordingly, their verse translations were compared by Finkel in his work “Sonnet LXVI in the Russian Translations” (1968).

In the next work “Lermontov and Other Translators of “Jewish Melody” by Byron” Finkel continues to study different translations of one piece and each time poses a question which he must answer: namely, how accurate and adequate translations are in the relation to the original.

In the conclusion we can say that Chernovatyi's book did recover the “forgotten theorist of Ukrainian translation studies”. The book contains a series of the most notable articles of Finkel. Each of these works does not lose its relevance and has a theoretical value as the author wanted. Finkel's articles help understand:

the importance of the historical background of the original text;

the difficulties of translating idiomatic expressions and phraseology items;

the way different translators approached the issue of conveying(rendering) the national peculiarities in translation;

how important the study of translation is;

criteria for assessing translations regarding accuracy and adequacy.

Chernovatyi writes and proves that Finkel's works, which are included in this title, have value and will be of interest to translators, philologists, and anyone interested in the history of the Ukrainian translation studies.

References

1. Черноватий Л.М., Карабан В.І., Подміногін В.О., Кальниченко О.А., Радчук В.Д. О.М. Фінкель - забутий теоретик українського перекладознавства: збірка вибраних праць. - Вінниця: Нова Книга, 2007. - 438 с.

2. https://uk.wikipedia. org/wiki/Франко_Іван_Якович.

3. http://ivan-franko.blog- spot.com/2011/11/blog-post_7974.html.

4. http://donpatriot.ru/1520finkel aleksandr moiseevich lingvist professor perevodchik s neskolkikh evropejskikh jazykov.html.

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