Заголовки в романі Томаса Бруссіґа «Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee» та їхнє відтворення в українському перекладі

Abstract

The paper explores the peculiarities of headings in Thomas Brussig’s novel «Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee» and the means of reproducing their functions in the Ukrainian translation. The problems of equivalency and subjective transformations in connection with author’s style are investigated. Headings as strong positions are important elements of texts architectonic and specific communicative unities. We distinguish many functions such as nominative, informative, expressive, emotive functions which dominate according to the genre and style of texts. Scientists pay much attention to such aspects as semantics, classification, structure and functions of headings. Different types of headings need different ways of their translation. Equivalents in the functions are more important than formal equivalency. The informative expository headings are easy to reproduce in translation by using the same descriptive models. In the novel there are only a few topic-identifying headings where the content is explained, so that the translation has the functional equivalency with the original. It is more difficult when headings have intertextual character and contain many allusions instead of direct content description. Brussig’s chapter headings only partially reflect the text content and let the reader interpret it in different way. It depends on general cultural context (cultural lacunes) and background knowledge if all the intertextual elements can be understood. That’s why it often seems necessary to choose the explanatory headings while translating. They make headings more transparent but there is no ambiguity and disappointed expectation due to the original. In the article has been shown how the associations connected with song names, literary quotes, polysemantic words attract the attention of readers and influence the interpretation of chapter content and which effects disappear by translation. In the Ukrainian translation all the headings have an informative part containing the words «a story about» as a marker for content. The choice of topic-identifying headings for translation causes great differences in the interpretation of chapters because of predictability missing in the original. It is especially undesirable when other associations appear by reading of the translation. The variation in the length of the text section corresponds to a difference in the scope of the information in the translation. In long chapters there are many acts and events but the translator chooses subjectively only one of them for heading content. In this case the heading has a strong steering role for the reader and the functional equivalency is lost.