ПРОБЛЕМА СЛИЯНИЯ ТРИГГЕР/КОНТЕКСТ ПРИ ПЕРЕВОДЕ ОТРЫВКОВ ТЕКСТА С ЮМОРИСТИЧЕСКИМ ЭФФЕКТОМ

Научная статья
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18454/RULB.9.25
Выпуск: № 1 (9), 2017
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Аннотация

В статье, которая затрагивает сферу перевода, рассматривается проблема слияния триггеров и контекстов в рамках смежных отрывков с юмористическим эффектом. В отличие от других работ, посвященных исследованиям юмора в рамках представленной парадигмы, где обычно материалом для анализа являются тексты шуток и анекдотов, и как правило наличествует только один триггер, в данной статье представлен анализ отрывков в рамках литературного произведения большего объема. В статье наглядно представлены варианты расположения триггеров на небольшом фрагменте художественного текста. Помимо этого, схематично показаны возможные комбинации взаимодействия контекста и триггера в целостном тексте. Спаянность и взаимозависимость рассматриваемых элементов могут существенно затруднять работу переводчика, поскольку влияют как на распознавание отрывков с юмористическим эффектом, так и на их перекодировку. Анализ возможных комбинаций триггер/контекст позволит переводчику не только увидеть нужные единицы перевода, но и выбрать необходимую стратегию. Автор считает, что вариации не являются специфической областью для конкретной лингвокультуры, но их комбинация и частота могут свидетельствовать об авторском идиостиле.

The process of globalization and erasing boundaries between cultures enhance the importance of the sphere of translation. People enjoy reading stories and novels written in foreign languages, discovering new things about other cultures. But they do not like to be limited by a language barrier, so they tend to study languages or try to get acquainted with targeted works by means of translation. That`s why humour as an inherent part of the society and literature could be a point to face challenge. From this perspective, the importance of humour studies and translation research of extracts with a humorous effect is beyond doubt.

It should be admitted that «the area of humour and translation has not always been so popular in academia. Before the mid-nineties academic literature on the subject was scarce and often more anecdotal than scholarly in nature» [2]. However, at present this sphere «has become a popular subject for postgraduate dissertations in the field of Translation Studies» [1].

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this paper we regard the term ‘humour’ in the broadest sense. According to S. Attardo, the scholars dealing with humour studies usually use the term humor as a generic one: «as an umbrella term encompassing programmatically all the semantic field of humor and humorous forms» [6, p.166]. Nevertheless, it should be noted that «there is no terminological agreement among different researchers» on the point [8, p.8]. We believe a text may be characterized as a single-joke-carrying-text if, after Viktor Raskin, it «is compatible, fully or in part, with two different scripts; the two scripts with which the text is compatible are opposite (...). The two scripts with which some text is compatible are said to overlap fully or in part in this text» [8, p.99].

Usually scholars pay attention to the so called ‘single-joke texts’, that is anecdotes or mere jokes. A certain amount of research of that kind is devoted to the problem of text structure or the problem of cohesion in humourous texts. For example, Wei Liu analyzes humour in cohesive devices, stating that «understanding humour and analyzing humour with cohesion is new to most of us» [9, p.90]. The author regards different devices, such as substitution or ellipsis, from the angle of cohesion, but not for translation purposes.

V. Raskin and S. Attardo deal with some structural problems of humorous texts, regarding the position and the sequencing of jab/punch lines, introducing terms like «strand», «combs» and «bridges» for a specific order of these lines, etc. They note the importance of future research on the issue: «The configurations of lines and the nature of the strands and/or stacks can be then analyzed to reveal aspects of the humorous element of the text (and in some cases, of the text itself)» [5, p.79].

For the purpose of translation, a grounding of a special structural element – the minimal part of a text that has to be decoded and then recoded immediately – is an essential issue, so we call this part an ‘extract with humorous effect’ that consists of a trigger and a context. We do not employ such terms as ‘narratives’ and ‘micronarratives’ (as Attardo does), since they have their specified meanings in the Russian linguistics.

The term ‘extract with humorous effect’ is used here by contrast to the term ‘joke’, which is usually used for the special type of the text that is too short, specific in function and has no connection with the bigger text. We believe the term is more appropriate to deal with in the context of translation as we have to isolate united elements of the text which a translator could work with.

The structure of a novel or a story is complex. Analyzing narratives and micronarratives, S. Attardo raises the question of the sophisticated borderlines, claiming that «deciding when one narrative ends and the other(s) begins is however far from trivial» [5, p.81].

After V. Raskin, we employ the term ‘trigger’ to denote the element of an extract that has something to switch the first script to the second one. We do not distinguish between different types of trigger elements, such as punch lines or jab lines because they differ only in position and «semantically speaking they are identical objects» [5, p.82].

The direction of the study is multidiscipline in general but the key approach is the cognitive one. In translation studies, it is the principal approach nowadays because of the general comprehension that this special sphere of knowledge could help scholars and translators to move beyond the stereotyped understanding of the translation process.

METHODS AND MATERIALS

Alongside general methods that are applied for this type of research, such as observation, deduction, etc, we used some specific methods. For example, the continuous sampling method was used to find out the extracts with a humorous effect in general; to differentiate between trigger and context we applied such methods as a method of immediate constituent and semantic analyses.

The extracts chosen for the research have been compared and contrasted with the purpose of exposing any similarities or differences in trigger/context distribution in the original text and in translation. Therefore, the method of distributional analyses was also helpful for this aim.

For the paper we have analyzed the texts of two novels written by Douglas Adams [3, 4] and two Russian translations of each of those extracts [1, 2].

TRIGGER/CONTEXT COHESION

At first sight, the following example seems to be a coherent and humorously homogenous text. However, when analyzing it in details a lot of nuances could be elicited.

Perhaps it would save time if he went back to get his car, but then again it was only a short distance, and he had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his method of "Zen" navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both. [4, p.35]

The extract is rather complicated because of its syntactical entity – it is formed as one sentence. But another point should be taken into account – humorous effect could be expressed by all types of language means: a morpheme, lexeme, word-combination, part of a sentence, a whole sentence, a passage and a text in general.

Thus, speaking in terms of «trigger-context» area, we can observe that there are at least four extracts of different structure in the given text, and each extract is built with the help of an individual type of logical mechanism.

Marking the part of a text which is a trigger with ‘Tr’, and a part of a text which is a context with ‘Cxt’, we may observe several schemes below.

  1. Perhaps it would save time if he went back to get his car, but then again it was only a short distance (Cxt1), and he had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving (Tr1).
  2. This was largely because of his method of "Zen" navigation (Tr2), which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it (Cxt2).
  3. This was largely because of his method of "Zen" navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it (Cxt3). The results were more often surprising than successful (Tr3) <…>.
  4. The results were more often surprising than successful (Cxt4), but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both (Tr4).   

Schematically it could be illustrated as in Picture 1 below:

 

Picture 1 – trigger/context cohesion

Fig. 1 – trigger/context cohesion

 

As we see, although the trigger normally follows the context, it can also precede it. It is of vital importance to understand this fact and to preserve it in translation.

Moreover, there could be a scheme when a trigger of a preceding extract is a context for the following one, or the combination Tr+Cxt of one extract may serve as a context for another one, as we observe in the example mentioned above.

TRANSLATION CHALLENGE

Analyzing the translations, we concluded that a trigger/context cohesion is preserved in both translations, which is the most obvious decision and strategy of the translators. The place of the trigger and context is not a translation problem, as we realized after examining the original text and the translations. Here the specific position of each trigger and each context limits variability within the passage with several extracts. The transformation is less applicable due to the fact that the author`s individual style consisting of such an arrangement should be preserved.

When there is only one extract – one trigger and one context (if any) – the translator could possibly change something syntactically. However, within the examples in question the rearrangements are virtually impossible.

To illustrate the point, we wish to present another example from the same novel. This is a dialogue with a humorous effect, where each line is a trigger and a context for the next one.

"This, I need hardly tell you, is an outrage. You'd better get yourself a damn good lawyer, because mine's going to stick red-hot skewers in him." (Cxt1)

"Perhaps I should get myself a kebab instead." (Tr1) (Cxt2)

"You look as if you've had quite enough kebabs."(Tr2) [4, p.152]

It may seem that the situation is not so complex as in the first example, because there are several sentences here and the extracts are divided clearly. Functionally, we have two extracts here with a humorous effect (Extract 1 and Extract 2), where the trigger of Extract 1 is the context of Extract 2. So, schematically in the frame of the sentence it could be illustrated with Picture 2:

 

Picture 2 – trigger/context cohesion

Fig. 2 – trigger/context cohesion

 

In the translation presented below the translator did not change the lexical unit “kebab” which is not as frequently used in the daily life of Russian speakers and has fewer associations; thus, this decision makes the sense of the second line darker and therefore the humorous effect fainter. Subsequently, as the third line should have kept the same unit, the result is the absence of a humorous effect. The functional loss in the third line is diagnosed not only because of the misinterpreted lexical unit. The whole sense of the dialogue is also misunderstood. But the repetition of the previously used ineffectual lexeme plays a big role.

– Понятно. Ну что ж, я также очень вам благодарна за откровенность. То, что вы делали, должна сказать, просто возмутительно. Я бы посоветовала вам найти очень квалифицированного адвоката, потому что ему не избежать ударов раскаленными и острыми шпагами, которые вонзит в него мой адвокат.

 – Тогда, может быть, мне лучше найти себе кебаб вместо адвоката?

 – У вас у самого такой вид, как будто вы запихали в себя трудно определимое количество этих кебабов. <…> [1, p.443]

Let`s analyze another translation [2]:

– Ясно. Что ж, и вам спасибо за откровенность. Это, знаете ли, просто возмутительно. Желаю вам найти хорошего адвоката, потому что мой живо пронзит его раскаленными шампурами.

– Может, тогда лучше найти шашлык, а не адвоката?

– Судя по вашей внешности, шашлыков с вас уже достаточно. <…> [2, p.370]

In the second translation the translator changed the lexeme ‘kebab’ for one which is more frequently used in the Russian-speaking culture – ‘shashlik’, having valuable associations to create a humorous effect and thereby producing it more successfully. Therefore, the humorous effect of the third line is also preserved due to the script [to eat too much shashlik and be overweight as a result]. Russian speakers cannot be overweight because of eating too many kebabs, as kebabs are not our traditional food. Besides, the lexeme «шампурами» (instead of «шпагами») makes that bridge between the context and trigger.

The translation loss in the first extract of the first translation inevitably causes a translation loss in the second one. Thus we regard such trigger/context cohesion as one of the major translation problems with humour.

This trigger/context structure is not rare. Another novel by Adams includes the following passages, which constitute the same trigger/context cohesion:

“There really wasn’t a lot this machine could do that you couldn’t do yourself in half the time with a lot less trouble, (Cont1)” said Richard, “but it was, on the other hand, very good at being a slow and dim-witted pupil. (Tr 1=Cont2)”

Reg looked at him quizzically.

“I had no idea they were supposed to be in short supply (Tr 2=Cont3),” he said. “I could hit a dozen with a bread roll from where I’m sitting. (Tr3=Cont4)”

“I’m sure. (Tr4) But look at it this way. What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?” [3, p. 25].

CONCLUSIONS

The structure presented in the examples above occurs rather frequently. Therefore, a translator has to focus his attention on the extracts of the kind in order not to omit central part, which serves as a trigger for one extract and a context for another.

The extract could be functioning as something integral with the units inseparable, however, for translation purposes, the evaluation required should be made without exception.

The trigger/context cohesion is a very special textual element. Not only is it unique for each author, but also it has some stable peculiarities that could be regarded as basics for humorous extracts recognition and translation.

Список литературы

  • Адамс Д. Детективное агентство Дирка Джентли. Долгое чаепитие: Романы / Пер.с англ. – М.: ТКО АСТ, 1996. – 576c.

  • Адамс Д. Детективное агентство Дирка Джентли: сборник / Дуглас Адамс; пер. с англ. О. Корчевской. – Москва: АСТ, 2014. – 478, [2]с.

  • Adams D. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Pocket Books. Kindle Edition. – NY: Gallery Books, 2016. – 290p.

  • Adams D. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. – NY.: Pocket Books (ebook), 1990. – 307p.

  • Attardo S. Humorous texts: a Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. – New York; Mouton de Gruyter, 2001. – 238p.

  • Attardo S. Humor and Irony in Interaction: From Mode Adoption to Failure of Detection / Say not to Say: New perspectives on miscommunication / L. Anolli, R. Ciceri and G. Riva (Eds.) – IOS Press, 2001. – P. 165-185.

  • Chiaro D. Translation and Humour, Humour and Translation // Translation, Humour and Literature. Translation and Humour. – NY: Continuum Publishing Corporation, 2010. – Vol.1. – P. 1-33.

  • Raskin V. Semantic mechanisms of humour. – D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1984. – 284p.

  • Wei Liu Cohesive Device Analysis in Humor / Journal of Language Teaching and Research. – 2010. – Vol. 1. – № 1. – P. 90-93.