Shakespeare in anger or about the strategies of rendering invective in literary translation

Abstract

The article deals with the specifics of reproducing invective from William Shakespeare’s tragedy “King Lear” in Ukrainian translations by Panteleimon Kulish, Panas Myrny, Maksym Rylsky and Wassyl Barka. The research offers a communicatively-oriented approach to defining invective as an insulting expression construed on the basis of a negative appraisal of an addressee by a speaker. This approach expands to the maximal degree the range of possible means of expressing invective by including some stylistic devices and basically any linguistic units with connotations of a negative appraisal. As a result, the translator’s main task is to ensure pragmatic effect of an insult by preserving its negative appraisal and a concomitant emotive charge. At the same time invective’s unconventional character may require the translator’s additional attention as to preserving its semantic and structural specificity. The article demonstrates how historically the Ukrainian strategies of translating Shakespeare’s works were formed under the cultural influence of French (classicistic) and Russian (academic) traditions but not without the influence of Ukrainian own (travesty) tradition characterized by particular attention to employing rich colloquial resources of the Ukrainian language. The research allowed to single out three local strategies of translating Shakespeare’s invective within corresponding global strategies of translating his plays. All the analyzed translations were made under the strong influence of artistic and aesthetic views of the translators all of whom are established Ukrainian writers and / or poets. The XIXth century translations made at approximately the same time by Kulish and Myrny, implement the strategy that can be charactrerized as realistic-populist. Its main features are attentive attitude towards the source text and prevalence of Ukrainian colloquial means of expressing insult. Rylsky’s translation made on the grounds of neoclassicism is marked by the functional approach to reproducing invective with simultaneous omission of Shakespeare’s individual and archaic obscene expressions. In his translation, Rylsky gives preference to literary means of insult. Instead, Barka’s translation made on the grounds of neobarocco is of a formal-semantic character, though the translator somewhat overindulges in his own creative word-formation and thus ruins the balance of conventional and unconventional means of expressing invective in the source text.