Associations and verbal consciousness: an analysis based on four English and one Hungarian translation of Bulgakov’s novel: The Master and Margarita

Abstract

The typical linguocultural background of Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita, together with its culture-specific vocabulary (lacunas) leaning back to the Soviet times of the 1920s and 1930s, challenges both the readers and even the best translators. In this paper, we examine the verbal consciousness on both the individual and the national level, comparing the Russian original text of the First Chapter with its four English and one Hungarian translation. Leaning on the association method applied both in the Western academic discourse and by the Moscow School of Ethnopsycholinguistics, we demonstrate how the author’s (and the translators’) individual verbal consciousness presumably influenced the creation (and the translation) of the text.