Participants of the students’ scientific club “Philology” under the leadership of Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Germanic Philology and Translation of the National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic” Anna Pavelieva held a sitting, dedicated to the translation of tokens denoting food in Mykola Gogol’s novel “Old-world Landlords”. The fruitful scientific discussion was joined by 25 students of philology of 1-4 academic years and Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Germanic Philology and Translation Tetiana Kushnirova, who discussed the most pressing issues of translation of the most renowned Gogol’s works.
“Mykola Gogol, the author of “Evenings on a Farm Near Dykanka” and “Myrhorod”, was one of the most famous gourmet and culinary writers. He not only brilliantly described in his literary works feasts and ways of cooking, but he also loved to eat well and knew how to cook well. Even in correspondence with friends, the artist often mentioned the dishes he tasted in cafes and restaurants and during the so-called dinners he arranged for friends. Mykola Gogol’s descriptions of dishes have no equal, and the motif of food is one of the key motifs of “Ukrainian stories” and the poem “Dead Souls”. The motif of food acquires special significance in the story “Old-world Landlords”, in which love, birth, death, marriage, work, food, drinks are the main equivalent realities of idyllic life of landlords, among which there are no sharp contrasts, and all household, routine, trivial, unimportant in everyday life (or from the reader’s point of view) is, on the contrary, the most important in idyllic space. The motives of hospitality and food are the most significant components of the idyllic chronotope of the story, the artistic space of which is filled with food and drinks both raw and cooked. The day of old landowners is measured not by hours but by meal time, as Pulcheriia Ivanivna and Athanasius Ivanovych ate at least 8 times a day, and their whole lives flowed from meal to meal. This way of spending time had its own logic, since the landlords were happy to take care of each other, and the purpose and meaning of their lives not just food, but mutual care.
However, translating the names of Ukrainian dishes in the story, as well as other realities, requires great skill from translators, since when transferring ethnically marked tokens from one not closely related language to another, translators face an eternal problem: choosing between calquing, descriptive translation or equivalent and transcoding (transliteration or transcription) with the subsequent need to explain individual language units with the help of translation footnotes and thus overload the text with foreign language elements. Therefore, the problem of translating in English tokens to denote food in Gogol’s early prose is relevant and little studied today and requires further comprehensive research,” – commented the head of the club, Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of the Department of Germanic Philology and Translation at Poltava Polytechnic Anna Pavelieva.
According to Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Department of Germanic Philology and Translation Tetiana Kushnirova, scientists often study ethnocultural realities in all their diversity on the examples of the poem “Dead Souls”, the play “The Government Inspector” and the cycle “Petersburg Stories”.
“In the translation aspect, the attention of researchers is attracted, first of all, by the names, surnames and nicknames of the characters, phraseology, names of household items, weapons and clothing. Some features of the translation of realities to denote food in the writer’s works were considered in the scientific articles by Yavari Yu. V., Kokovina L. V., Hrinchenko N. O., Nesterenko O. V., but the peculiarities of the translation of ethnically marked language units to denote food in early Mykola Gogol’s prose had not previously been the subject of a special study. Scientific papers on the analysis of ways of translating tokens related to the thematic group “Food” in Gogol’s works today are unsystematic and should be rethought in terms of the current state of literary theory as well as translation theory and in the context of translation reception. Personally, I was curious about the motive of food in the story “Old-world Landlords” and the peculiarities of the translation into English of tokens to denote food,” – said the scientist.
“On our meeting club members considered the vocabulary of the thematic group “Food” in Mykola Gogol’s story “Old-world Landlords” in two versions of translation – one of Richard Piver and Larysa Volokhonska and the other of Constance Garnett and Isabel Hepgood. Participants came to the conclusion that both teams of translators, when transmitting tokens from the “Food” group to English, often used the techniques of descriptive translation, calquing, lexical and grammatical substitution (which simplified the reception of the text to the English-speaking reader. However, it deprived the reader of the opportunity to enjoy individual authorial language units and realities that play an important role in the context); less often – transcoding (transliteration and transcription) and omission. We not only analyzed two different translation options, but also offered our options and discussed possible replacements and clarifications, the feasibility of using certain translation methods and translation footnotes,” – says a regular member of the club, a second-year student at the Faculty of Philology, Psychology and Pedagogy Oleksandra Nestoryk.
The couple of translators – Richard Piver and Larysa Volokhonska – in their translations of extremely complex language Mykola Gogol’s works, which is rich in vernacular, occasionalism, clericalisms, cultural and ethnographically marked vocabulary, tried to convey the peculiarities of individual authorial vocabulary by stepping out of literary English language and using the transcoding technique, for that they are always criticized by reviewers of Mykola Gogol’s works translations as well as by other translators. At the same time, Larysa Volokhonska did not always correctly understand the language of that era, which was reflected in the inaccuracies in the translation of certain realities in Gogol’s works, such as “uzvar” [national Ukrainian beverage, cooked with dried fruits and berries – translator’s note] or “urda” [type of traditional whey cheese, common in Romania, the Pirot region of Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Hungary and Western Ukraine – t/n].
Constance Garnett and Isabelle Hepgood did not use transliteration or transcription in the translation of tokens to denote food, depriving the story of national and cultural colour; as well as some lexical items were omitted from the text of the translation. At the same time, in the English version of the text they very accurately conveyed the grammatical features of Gogol’s language (word order, diminutives, appeals, exclamations, reduction of stylistic color in colloquial language, use of pictorial and expressive means, etc.). However, both versions of the translation are quite adequate and generally convey the Ukrainian color of the works with the help of lexical means of the English language.
“The discussion on the adequacy of the translation into English of mushroom pickles in the story was extremely interesting, as both teams of translators used generalization and lexical-grammatical substitution techniques, which led to loss of the national color of the described dishes and simplified the perception of the text for English readers, in whose culture eating mushroom dishes have never been popular. It is worth noting that, for example, the name of the “Big Grasser” mushrooms [Phaeolepiota aurea (Fr.) Maire – t/n] was misinterpreted by both pairs of translators and in those translations the above mushrooms turned into pumpkins, so the sentence lost its meaning in the context of the paragraph, in which the main character shared the secrets of salt pickling mushrooms. In addition, in the cuisine of Gogol’s time, none of the recipes for pumpkin was soaked in vinegar, unlike mushrooms, which in Slavic countries are traditionally soaked and marinated in vinegar. As you can see, both teams of translators rejected the diminutive “mushroomies” and passed it by the usual token “mushrooms”, which slightly distorts the perception of the picture of the story, because in “Old World Landlords” couples use many diminutive forms of words in their speech for a reason – such peculiarities of the characters’ language point to their warm relations and act as markers of idyll in the literature of the Romantic era,” – adds a third-year student Mykola Bochkar.
We remind you that sittings of the students’ scientific club “Philology” are held at the Faculty of Philology, Psychology and Pedagogy of Poltava Polytechnic at least once a month.
The next siting of the club, dedicated to the chronotopic coordinates of M. V. Gogol’s novel “May Night, or the Drowned Maiden”, will take place in May. Students, schoolchildren of Poltava and the region, interested in the problems of literary studies, linguistics and translation studies, connoisseurs of colorful literary words and all interested are invited to participate.
For additional information on the time and place of the scientific club meetings, please contact the Department of Germanic Philology and Translation (Room 310-C) or directly the head of the club – Anna Kostiantynivna Pavelieva by phone: (095) 91-08-192.
It should be recalled that the scientist of the Department of Germanic Philology and Translation took part in the webinar “Information Hygiene during the War”.
Previously, the club members presented researches on the work of the author of the poem “Mazepa”, researched translations of phraseology in Mykola Gogol’s novel “Evening before Ivan Kupala”, studied the life and career of William Somerset Maugham, researched modern educational technologies, presented translation studies of the “father” of a classic detective and author of adventure novels, studied the creative heritage of Lake poets, exchanged life hacks on translating advertising slogans from global brands, researched a satirical novel by Mikhail Bulgakov and discussed the creative heritage of Polish science fiction writer.
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