Филологические науки/ 3.Теоретические и методологические проблемы исследования языка.

PhD in Philology, Karpukhina V.N.

Altai State University, Russia

The Interpretation Potential of a Fiction Text in Different Cultural Semiospheres: the Axiological Linguistics Aspect

The article deals with the source text and target text functioning in different cultural semiospheres. The subject analyzed is the changes of the interpretation potential of these texts in two or more cultures. We discuss the indefinite line drawing between the different forms of existence of the source text in an alien culture (it can be a translation text, an adaptation, an independent authorized text, etc.). This general linguistics problem gives us the task to find out the axiological linguistics parameters which help us to evaluate the level of understanding a text. These parameters should be used in the analysis of the children’s literature texts in the original and in the translation. The new scientific results of the research work are considered when the axiological evaluation of the translated fiction texts quality is appreciated on the basis of some special axiological linguistics parameters of text interpretation (the arguing point of view is in: [6]). The main methodological principles of the research work are the principles of anthropocentrism and dynamic translation text equivalence. The research work deals with the new modern linguistics paradigms, such as cognitive linguistics, theory of communication, the translation theory, etc.

The fiction text translation is conceived in the research paper as a type of a text interpretation, though these two terms can be opposites. The peculiarities of a fiction text as an object opened for the interpretation are given in one of the most renowned works by U. Eco: “A work of art, therefore, is a complete and closed form in its uniqueness as a balanced organic whole, while at the same time constituting an open product on account of its susceptibility to countless different interpretations which do not impinge on its unadulterable specificity” [2, p. 4].

One of the basic concepts in the theory of fiction text interpretation is the text interpretation potential. The interpretation potential of a fiction text in the translation process includes all the possible meanings of the source text verbalized in a special way in the target text. We consider the term the text interpretation potential to be the “umbrella term” for the pragmatic potential of a translated text. V.N. Komissarov thought the pragmatic potential of a text meant its ability to make a specific communicative effect, “to stimulate the Receptor to have some pragmatic attitudes to the message, in other words, make the pragmatic effect on the addressee of the information given” [4, s. 209]. The concentration only in the psychological (maximum in the psycholinguistic) aspect of the translated text when the pragmatic effect of this text in another semiosphere is evaluated is not quite correct. We think not only psychological, but the specific linguistic factors of the translated text changes should be taken into consideration when we appreciate the quality of its transformations in another language and culture semiosphere. The term the text interpretation potential seems to be more adequate in such a situational usage. It is not only the means of psychological influence on the target text addressee, but also the language means with the help of which this influence has been or will be made. There will be pragmatics, semantics, and syntax taken into account.

Moreover, the term the text interpretation potential supposes we have a variety of the source text interpretations when this text is translated into another culture semiosphere. It should be considered to evaluate the quality of different translations of the source text, too. The cognitive characteristics of this process are given by U. Eco: “Information is, therefore, an additive quality, something that added to one already knows as if it were an original acquisition. …In other words, the ambiguity of the aesthetic message is the result of the deliberate “disordering” of the code, that …had been imposed on the enthropic disorder characteristic of all sources of information. Obviously, neither this filtered information nor infinitive capacity of the source-message can be precisely quantified” [2, p. 67]. Discussing the communication games, E. Neiva assumes the society is shifting from signs to values nowadays in any cultural semiosphere [5, p. 71-73], and this assumptions goes well with the idea of necessity to evaluate the various versions of the translated texts functioning in another language semiosphere.

We suppose the nonlinearity of the source text meanings is verbalized in its different interpretation versions in another semiosphere. S.T. Zolyan defines the interpretation as “the attribution of worlds and contexts set to a text” [7, s. 12], because the fiction text should be explored “not only in its immanence and for itself, but first of all as a construing by the text ability to understand this text in different ways” [ibid., s. 9]. In the postmodern literary criticism studies such an approach to the textuality on the discourse level and the so called interlingual discourse can be found in the following work: [1].

For the axiological evaluation of the translated children’s literature texts quality to be adequate, we suggest the following list of the axiological linguistics parameters:

1. Keeping/ changing the structure of the source text (the number and the consequence of chapters, the number of characters);

2. Keeping/ changing the word-play game text compounds;

3. Keeping/ changing the correspondence of poetic and prosaic compounds of the source text;

4. Keeping/ changing the source text pragmatic potential.

In some situations it is possible to add to this list the parameter of keeping/ changing the narrative type of the source text, because this parameter can influence all the parameters mentioned above. A literary chronotope, especially in the children’s literature, seeing through the structure of a narrative, “can help us to read beyond the mechanics of “setting”, and to re-think depictions of narrative time-spaces in ideological terms, as subjective, changeable, and interwoven with the observer’s positionality. …The organization of time-spaces in narrative is complex and multifarious” [3, p. 46-47].

The research of the translated text according to this parametrical list lets us conclude with a probative force if the target text is an adaptation, rendering or an authorized independent text, existing in the different language semiosphere apart from the source text.

References:

1. Beaugrande R. de New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse: Cognition, Communication, and the Freedom of Access to Knowledge and Society. – Norwood, New Jersey : Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1997. – 670 p.

2. Eco U. The Open Work. – Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 1989. – 285 p.

3. Johnston R.R. Childhood: A Narrative Chronotope // Children’s Literature: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies / Ed. by P. Hunt. – Vol. 3 : Cultural Contexts. London, New York : Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2006. – P. 46-68.

4. Komissarov V.N. Teoriya perevoda. – M. : Vysshaya shkola, 1990. – 253 s.

5. Neiva E. Communication Games: The Semiotic Foundation of Culture. – Berlin, New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 2007. – 306 p.

6. Puurtinen T. Dynamic Style as a Parameter of Acceptability in Translated Children’s Books // Translation Studies : An Interdiscipline / Ed. by M. Snell-Hornby. – Amsterdam, Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1992. – P. 83-90

7. Zolyan S.T. Semantika i struktura poeticheskogo teksta. – Erevan: Izd-vo Erevanskogo un-ta, 1991. – 316 s.