TRANSLATION OF ALLUSIONS IN JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER’S NOVEL “EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED”

Introduction

Literary translation has always been one of the most challenging and sophisticated instances of human creativity. Not only does it require an accurate rendition of the original text, but also aims at preserving its stylistic and esthetic particularities. Literature as a written tradition has been evolving for centuries and has taken different shapes depending on the social, political and cultural flows that dominated in the society at a given time. By using particular techniques and stylistic devices each writer created his/her own distinct work that stood out from the rest. However, as Aristotle had earlier claimed, all works, no matter how unique and individualistic they are, strive to imitate the real world (mimesis) [8, P.49]. This idea became one of the most fundamental principles of the Renaissance and was later redefined in the 20^th century. Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher and literary critic, played a huge role in seeing the concept of mimesis in a new light.  Based on his studies of F.M. Dostoevsky’s novels, he pointed out that any novel is polyphonic by nature and besides the voice of the author there are a lot of other voices that exist in a dialogic relationship with each other [2, P. 41]. The same idea is true for writers who in the creation process establish ties with the authors of the preceding eras. Thanks to this theory, in 1960s another prominent figure of the 20^th century literary criticism Julia Kristeva coined a term intertextuality, which signified that all the texts, whether explicitly or implicitly, make references to each other [1, P. 71]. Intertextual relationships between the works can manifest themselves in a variety of ways: in the form of reminiscences, direct quotations, allusion (indirect citation) and so on. Allusions became especially popular with the authors of the modernity and later became one of the most prominent features of the postmodern era. However, despite being the hallmark of high creativity and author’s genius, these literary devices often come as a challenge for both readers and translators as they can be very difficult to spot. That usually happens when an author and a potential reader come from two different backgrounds. As it’s a translator who usually builds the bridge between the two alien cultures, vast knowledge of society’s cultural and linguistic particularities becomes essential. Nevertheless, the translator sometimes has to introduce some changes in the translated text to appeal to the interests and values of the recipient culture. This requires a lot of effort and a great deal of creative sensitivity, as it is crucial to preserve the distinctive features of an original text. In this article we are going to see how the translator Vasiliy Arkanov managed to translate allusions from English into Russian used by the postmodern author Jonathan Safran Foer in his novel “Everything Is Illuminated” as one of the reflections of his individual style.

Method

The methodology of the research is based on the contextual and comparative analysis of the original and translated text. At the core of the analysis lies translation shifts theory proposed by V.N. Komissarov. The following theory is viewed as the most relevant for that kind of research, as it helps classify the translation techniques that are used by the translator V.A. Arkanov in the process. They include:

 Lexical shifts:

1. transcription and transliteration;
2. loan translation;
3. lexical and semantic shifts (substantiation, generalization, modulation).

Grammatical shifts:

1. word-based translation;
2. sentence fragmentation и unification of its components;
3. grammatical shifts.

Complex shifts:

1. antonymous translation;
2. descriptive translation;
3. compensation. [9, P. 173]

Discussion

Jonathan Safran Foer is a postmodern writer who belongs to the third generation of Jews after World War II. He was born on February 21, 1977 in Washington DC in a Jewish family. His grandfather, whom Foer never met, was a survivor of the Holocaust. The future writer graduated from Princeton and had tried a lot of professions afterwards. He also visited Ukraine to familiarize himself with his ancestors’ background. This journey laid the foundations for his novel “Everything Is Illuminated” which was published in 2002. The story tells about Jonathan S. Foer (both the author and the hero) who sets out on a trip to Ukraine to look for a woman who saved his father from the Nazi. Upon arrival he meets Alex Petrov who together with his grandfather guides the hero to the forsaken shtetl. The novel has an intricate structure and is divided into parts where events unfold in thee different time frames. The first one takes place at present and is written in the form of letters, which Alex directs to Jonathan. In them the protagonist shares his thoughts and feelings about his life experiences. The second part presents a story told by Alex about the quest for a woman, who saved Jonathan’s grandfather, and the destroyed shtetl Trachimbrod. The third part features the chapters of the novel written by Jonathan where he tells a story of his family and shtetl life starting from 1791 until 1942. Interestingly though, the first two parts present the real accounts of protagonists’ experiences while the third one is written in the style of magic realism where fantasy and reality intertwine. That makes it difficult to understand whether the depicted events ever took place in the real life. Besides that, this part of the novel is characterized by the abundance of stylistic figures. Allusions that are the main focus of this article are among them.

Allusions are defined as a figure of speech used by an author to make a covert reference to the fact, historic event, creative work, etc. They may serve different purposes and can be used as a parody or irony, tribute or accolade for the previous generations. Almost all allusions are implicit references, but an author may decide to make them more obvious by marking them in italics or bold letters. That was done in the novel “Everything Is Illuminated.” Generally, allusions may refer to anyone or anything, but it’s very common for English-speaking authors to allude to Biblical parables and myths that the Russian reader can be unfamiliar with due to a more profound secularization of the society. In “Everything Is Illuminated” there are a lot of references to the Bible, but some of these derivations are intentionally rendered and perverted. Let’s have a closer look at some of them and see what the translator did to translate them from English into Russian.
Example №1:

In this example the author alludes to the myth about the Ten Commandments. He mentions the First, the Third, the Forth and the Sixth Commandments:

With the help of extralinguistic knowledge the translator could spot the allusion in the text despite some minor changes incorporated by the author. The analysis shows that imperative mood in a now considered largely archaic “Thou shalt” disappeared from the novel’s text, and a more common form “do not do” was used instead.  While translating the First Commandment the translator used lexical substitution of the biblical phrase “пред лицом моим” with another, more colloquial form “кроме как ко мне.” The archaic words “всуе” и “убий” appeared in the translation of the Third and the Sixth Commandments. The quote from the Forth Commandment, which goes “почитай святыней,” became a semantic borrowing of the English phrase “keep me holy.” Thus, despite the minor changes introduced by Foer, the translator could convey the meaning of the allusions and with the help of archaic words gave the text more expression and solemnity. Thanks to it, the translation became even more stylistically expressive than the original.  

Example №2:

In this example the author makes reference to the biblical myth about Cain and Abel. The first part of the sentence “but much to his surprise” was translated with the help of antonymous translation as “к немалому его изумлению.”  The translator also changed the passive voice construction “Cain who was caned” into the active voice “камни полетели в Каина.” It is largely due to the fact that in Russian active voice is much more common than the passive. The translated fragment was also characterized by the inverse word-order
“И на вечное скитанье по земле обречен был Каин.” Inversion is a stylistic device that is used for emphatic purposes and puts a “bookish” spin on the context where it is used [8, P. 225]. Some changes were also introduced on the lexical level. For example, the expression “witty verse”(literary “остроумные вирши”) was replaced with the noun “мудрость.” Another phrase “get laid,” which is categorized as a slang term and considered to be vulgar and profane, was substituted by a colloquial but less slangy expression “снять подружку на ночь.” The noun «magnus opus» (trans.“великая работа”) was translate as “бесценный опус.” Opus stands for any scientific or literary work, essay, etc. According to Macmillan dictionary, this expression is sometimes used as an irony and has a mark “humorous”. In the last part of the sentence the verb “know” was replaced by the functional analogue “встречаться”, and a sentence in a conjunctive mood “Не встретил никого, кто прочитал бы...” substituted the same fragment in the Past Perfect tense “...who had read a page of his magnum opus.” 

Example №3:

In this example the author tells about the burning bush that wasn’t consumed by the fire. According to the biblical narrative, God appeared before the Moses in the flames of fire and commanded him to free the Israelites by leading them out of Egypt. However, this image is absent in the translation and replaced by the more familiar for the Russian-speaking society figure of Virgin Mary Icon “Unburnt Bush” (“Neopalimaya Kupina”). Hence, «прибегать к помощи неопалимой купины» means ask for Virgin Mary’s assistance and help. Judging from this example, it can be inferred that in some cases a translator has to sacrifice the image portrayed by the author and replace it with the more familiar and comprehensible for the recipient culture.

Results

The overall analysis shows that the translator succeeded in identifying the origins of the citations, as the majority of them allude to the well-known biblical parables and legends. Moreover, some of them were marked in bold or italics, which made their recognition even easier. Nevertheless, as the above examples show, the author rewrote some of the derivations as he saw fit. It might have been done intentionally to show his skepticism towards the society that distanced itself from the traditions. The analysis also showed that to translate the allusions the translator most often used syntactical and grammatical substitutions. However, in some cases he had to replace the image created by the author and substitute it with the one that is more familiar to the Russian-speaking readers. Besides that, stylistically marked lexical items were widely used during the translation process, which helped make the translated text even more emotional and expressive.

Conclusion

The allusions have been widely used for centuries but became the hallmarks of the whole literary era only in the 20^th century. Many modern and postmodern authors have used them for different purposes such as giving accolade to their ancestors, creating ironic effect, and so on. Being the bearers of stylistic and expressive features they can present a lot of difficulties for the translators. Hence, their successful translation largely depends on the translator’s linguistic and creative skills. Besides that, broad-based knowledge plays a key role in identifying allusions within the context, since they usually make reference to well-known pieces of work such as Bible. When the translator pinpoints an allusion he/she can start the process of its rendition. If the allusion is recognizable, the changes mostly take place on grammatical and syntactic levels. That stems from the fact that all the languages have different grammatical rules of sentence construction that have to be complied with. However, if the translator fails to translate a stylistically significant fragment due to profound cultural differences between the source and the target language, he/she can make up for the loses by using figures of speech or connotative words which have the similar emotional effect as the original ones.