Ways of interpreting stylistic devices in translation.

PHONETIC STYLISTIC DEVICES: Onomatopoeia, Alliteration, Assonance, Rhyme, Graphon.

LEXICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES - Metaphor, Personification, Metonymy/ Synecdoche, Pun, Irony, Humour, Zeugma, Epithet, Oxymoron, Antonomasia, Allusion.

SYNTACTICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES - Rhetorical Question, One-member Sentences, Types of Repetition, Parallel Constructions, Inversion, Detachment, Ellipsis, Break in the Narrative, Represented speech, Polysyndeton, Asyndeton, Attachment.

LEXICO-SYNTACTICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES - Antithesis, Hyperbole, Climax/Gradation, Simile, Litotes, Periphrasis, Euphemism.

To enhance the communicative effect of his message the author of the source text may make use of various stylistic devices, such as metaphors, similes, puns and so on. Coming across a stylistic device the translator has to make up his mind whether it should be preserved in his translation or left out and compensated for at some other place.

Metaphors and similes though most commonly used in works of fiction are not excluded from all other types of texts. A metaphor and a simile both assert the resemblance between two objects or processes but in the latter the similarity is made explicit with the help of prepositions “as” and “like”.

Many metaphors and similes are conventional figures of speech regularly used by the members of the language community. Such figurative units may be regarded as idioms and translated in a similar way. As in the case of idioms their Russian equivalents may be based on the same image (a powder magazine-пороховойпогреб, white as snow-белыйкакснег) or on a different one (a ray of hope-проблескнадежды, thin as a rake-худойкакщепка). Similarly, some of the English standard metaphors and similes are rendered into Russian word for word (as busy as a bee-трудолюбивыйкакпчела), while the meaning of others can only be explained in a non-figurative way (as large as life-внатуральнуювеличину).

More complicated is the problem of translating individual figures of speech created by the imagination of the ST author. They are important elements of the author’s style and are usually translated word for word. Nevertheless the original image may prove unacceptable in the target language and the translator will have to look for a suitable occasional substitute. Consider the following example:

They had reached the mysterious mill where the red tape was spun, and Yates was determined to cut through it here and now. (St. Heym. “Crusaders”)

“Red tape” is usually translated as «бюрократизм, волокита», but bureaucratism cannot be spun or cut through. The translator had to invent an occasional substitute:

Ониупёрлисьвстенуштабнойбюрократии, ноЙейтствёрдорешилтутжепробитьэтустену.

A similar tactics is resorted to by the translator when he comes across a pun in ST. If the SL word played upon in ST has a Russian substitute which can also be used both literally and figuratively, a word-for-word translation is possible:

Whenever a young gentlemen was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, He might consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze.

Когда доктор Блаймбер брал в руки какого-нибудь джентльмена, тот мог быть уверен, что его как следует стиснут.

In other cases the translator tries to find in TL another word that can be played upon in a similar way:

He says he’ll teach you to take his boards and make a raft of them; but seeing that you know how to do this pretty well already, the other … seems a superfluous one on his part.

Here the word “teach” is intended by the owner of the boards to mean “to punish” but the man on the raft prefers to understand it in the direct sense. The Russian equivalent «учить» does not mean “to punish” and the translator finds another word which has the two required meanings:

Он кричит, что покажет вам, как брать без спроса доски и делать из них плот, но поскольку вы и так прекрасно знаете, как это делать, это предложение кажется вам излишним.

Translation of such allusions is no easy matter. The translator has to identify the source and the associations it evokes with the SL receptors and then to decide whether the source is also known to the TL receptors and can produce the similar effect. He may find the allusion untranslatable even if the source is sufficiently popular. L.Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” was many times translated into Russian and is much enjoyed both by children and adults in this country. However, the translator will hardly preserve the obvious allusion to the book in the following sentence:

The Tories were accused in the House of Commons yesterday of “living in an Alice in Wonderland world” on the question of nuclear arms for Germany.

Вчера в палате общин консерваторов обвинили в том, что они питают призрачные иллюзии по поводу ядерного вооружения ФРГ.

Some stylistic devices may be ignored by the translator when their expressive effect is insignificant and their reproduction in the target text would run counter to the spirit of TL. One of the oldest and most commonly used stylistic devices in English is alliteration. Many headings, strings of epithets and other phrases in English texts consist of words, which begin with the same letter. An Englishman seems to be very happy if he can call an artificial satellite “a man-made moon” or invent a headline like “Bar Barbarism in Bars”.

Repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. It adds rhythm and balances to the utterance it in TT. Repetition, however, is more often used in English than in Russian and the translator may opt for only a partial reproduction of the English long series of identical language units.