Style as a literary notion and its reproduction in translation

Style as a literary notion and its reproduction in translation.

SamDCHTI magistranti Aminova Nargiza.I.

In translation there are many factors which effect to the perfectness of literary translation. One of the most important issues which an author faces while translating works from another language, especially, fictional works is a style. The notion of style in general and the notion of style of the particular author is vague and ambiguous. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles lists in this entry 28 definitions divided into three main groups: I) stylus, pin, stalk; II) writing; manner of writing, therefore of speaking; III) Manner, fashion. We will base on the semems of the second group. It includes 7 points, one of them being obsolete and two more are not related to the belles-lettres. The remaining four are the followings:

1. 
   The manner of expression characteristic of a particular writer (accordingly of an orator), or of a literary group or period; a writer`s mode of expression considered in regard to clearness, effectiveness, beauty and the like.
   
2. 
   In generalized sense: Those features of literary composition which belong to form and expression rather than to the substance of the thought or method expressed.
   
3. 
   A manner of discourse, or tone of speaking, adopted in addressing others or in ordinary conversation.
   
4. 
   A form of words, phrase, or formula, by which a particular idea or thought is expressed.
   

The Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language in 11 volumes is far less detailed and provides four semems, the first two relevant to the Literature Studies:

Style. 1. The combination of the features characteristic of the art in definite time and of definite trend or distinctive of individual manner of artist as to his idea and artistic form.

2. The combination of methods in linguistic means usage, characteristic of particular writer, or literary work, trend, genre, etc. The combination of peculiar features in discourse organisation, manner of linguistic expression. The discourse organisation as to the syntactic norms and rules of word usage.

Author`s style – is a combination of the particular features of author`s creativity, which make his works different from the works of other authors. As we can see, the definitions are rather broad and ambiguous, New English Dictionary speaks of clearness, effectiveness and beauty of writer’s mode, while the other dictionaries say nothing of the kind, but concentrate on the usage of expressive means, discourse organization and grammatical rules. V.Vinogradov explains this ambiguity in understanding of the notion of style by the fact that different researchers choose different principles as a basis for definition. Indeed, V. Alekseev views style as “something original and similar to nothing” and believes it to be close to aesthetic taste, though, not quite the same thing; and dwells on the deviation from norm as a necessary characteristic of artistic style. A very interesting approach is presented by O. Sokolov and V. Fashchenko, who differentiate style-creating factors (writer`s imagery, themes, problems touched upon in the text, and genre norms) and style-creating means (form elements of the artistic text: composition, lingual expressive means with their lexical and syntactic structures and acoustic peculiarities). The study of the form elements is better to be conducted according to the levels of language; and their reproduction should be studied at all the levels, graphical and prosodic including. Moreover, not only the reproduction of usually characteristic features should be studied, but also of those which are highly unusual for the author, and thus violate his usual style of writing.

The reproduction of author’s style in the translations to other languages is a very interesting problem, the one which has been frequently discussed by numerous scholar. For instance, A. Parshyn states that style and manner of writing of the translation should be the same as in the original, and strongly supports the “stylistic assimilation” (that is, when the style of the original and translation is similar if not the same) as opposed to “stylistic creolisation” (so-called transfusions). R. Zorivchak defines the “ideal style of translation” as “the best possible representation of author’s idiostyle, the result of finding of the best means to express sense, and to render functions of all components of the original in the target language”.

It is a well known fact, that each translator, as each reader in fact, views the source text in a different way. Furthermore, translator’s personality influences not only the process of reading and interpreting of the original text, but also the process of actually writing the translation. Each translator introduces into translated work a part of his own personality. Thus, the notion of translator’s style and the vision of translator as author’s rival appear. The notion of a translator as a figure not dependent on the author can be seen in the views of the school of Manipulation, or descriptivists. J. Holmes and A. Lefevere believed, that translation products were to be traced back to the sociohistorical conditions of their emergence in the (mainly literary) "systems", "fields" or "spaces" making up the host environments; their main idea was that the "sociocultural inscription" of translation can be described and accounted for. Neither deep structure level, nor abstract core of meaning were important, and their translation method presupposed domestication, thus leaving the author`s style out of the scope of translator`s interest.

Nevertheless, there are no ready-made rules how to render author’s style, and each artistic text demands special approach with its unique variation of methods used. It has been noticed that the more translator likes the works of the author he is to translate, and the more his worldview resembles that of the author’s one, the less problems translator is likely to encounter and the better rendering of style he is likely to perform. We recognize the impossibility of full rendering of author’s style in a translated work; however, we believe that this aim is worth at least trying to achieve.

It should be added that the various situational uses of language are often characterized by using the concept of style.

While the term style is often associated with the distinctive way an individual use the language, an equally common approach is to categorize styles as types of discourse used by a group or groups of people and deriving from the functions of language, i.e. various types of language used in specific situations. Style may also refer to wide categories such as written and spoken language, or fact and fiction, or these main categories may be divided into subcategories depending on the purpose the language is used for in each case. What is common to all these descriptions of style is that there is always a situational context to which the lots of varieties of style are linked. Even before the emergence of stylistics proper as a discipline, that is, the study of language and style in texts, in the 1960s, various stylistically-oriented approaches had been applied as far back as the cultures of antiquity, though these style-related characterizations may have used other terms to refer to the stylistic aspects of a text, such as the spirit of the text.

Literature:

1. 
   W. Katie, A Dictionary of Stylistics. London: Longman.2001.
   
2. 
   B. Beier, Jean Stylistic Approaches to Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome.2006.
   
3. 
   Паршин А. Теория и практика перевода.2008.