Imagery in Translation. the way out may be found in some fourth dimension: on the one part, the characters are dressed somewhat unusual

the way out may be found in some "fourth dimension": on the one part, the characters are dressed somewhat unusual, slightly marked with "foreignness," while in their translated speech ap­peared words or structures from the source language.

Linguistic means not only differ in form in different lan­guages, they also differ greatly in their emotive power. National peculiarities in the manner of speaking are quite often untranslat­able. Such may be considered Russian diminutive suffixes, which caused many typical misinterpretations in English, like little fa­ther for «батюшка». But is it to become dad, daddy or Papa? Another problem is that of English"'"you" when addressing close relatives and friends. Each time the translator has to assess whether this or that relationship is close enough to translate the English you by «ты» or «вы». The flower girl from Pygmalion speaks cockney, which is imitated in written, "Ow, eezye-oon san, is e?" In Russian, her speech loses much of colour, and she speaks quite literary, even rather intellectual. «А, так это ваш сын?» The problem is that it makes no sense to imitate her cockney accent phonetically, but a translator may use some other markers of a common speech, grammar, for instance, «Ага, ваш, значица, сыночек!»

How many imitative words and structures can be used in translation not to break the impression of the whole play? There is a rule in the theory of translation which recommends to retain (or imitate) only those source units that the target language speak­ers can perceive as "purveyors" of important national informa­tion. Then, such details should be comprehensible to the audi­ence, for there is no way for supplying any volume of cultural comments to a theatre pit. A widely spread situation is the En­glish / love you! used very often, especially in modern stage or screen works. It would be a mistake to always translate it into Russian as Я люблю тебя! In Russian, the phrase is more solemn and sounds inappropriate in many common situations when you can just say something like «Держись!», «Я с тобой!», «Все

хорошо!» or use gestures and mimics.

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________ Практикум но художественному переводу__

Some other national details may sound too heavy when redundant, for example, a great number of inches, pints, or gal­lons, turned into Russian «дюймы, пииты и галлоны» and poured onto a poor spectator from the stage, make him more than puz­zled, they make him bored. The rule may be "Do not overdo!" It is preferable to use international measures in most cases, and only those which are specific for the particular text and make a colour­ful detail are to be saved in the imitated form. To such a category we may refer national currency: it would be inappropriate to trans­late cents as «копейки». Yet a sovereign may be comfortably replaced by «фунт» in Russian, for it sounds national enough and at the same time comprehensible, whereas «соверен» is rath­er enigmatic to most Russian spectators.

Probably, the most reasonable way for a translator of a drama text is to work out a balance of transformation principles; we must measure not only the text but also the character and sit­uation to decide when to prefer a semantic equivalent — and when to reconstruct a stylistic effect or intonation.

To sum up are the following recommendations: ' Assess the timing and rhythm of the source play and try to reconstruct an analogous structure in the target language.

• Study the mood and temper of characters to follow them
regaining their speech in translation.

• Study the style and semantics of the source text and fol­
low the functional strategy of their reconstruction.

• Study cultural and historical details in the text and look
for their reconstruction.

• Assess national colouring in the text under translation and
select a proper strategy of its reconstruction.

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