Task for translation: Ozymandias
Imagery in Translation
• What other words may be put in line with the worship,
the desire, the feeling, the devotion, lovel What connects them in
one group? What is different about them?
• Try to change this text into a sonnet. Seeif the results
influence the character and mood of the poem.
• Translate this poem word for word into Russian. See what
grammar transformations are necessary to make the text sound
more "poetic" in Russian.
• Make your own decisions about what toretain and what
to omit in translation of this poem.
• Reconstruct the rhyming frame of the textto place the
most important words in the strongest positions connected by
rhymes.
• Fill in the lines within the rhyme scheme with the rest of
words to save the source metre.
• Work carefully on the grammar and vocabulary equiva
lents and transform the source units if and when necessary.
• Read the result aloud to see if the rhythmic pattern of the
translation is similar to that of the source poem.
• Compare your version with the other translations of the
same poem. Comment upon the difference.
• Discuss the results.
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Hulf sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart thatfed;
Практикум по художественному переводу
And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and dispair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.
EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION
• Study the contents and imagery of the sonnet.
• Find out the meaning of the name Ozymandias and its
Russian counterparts.
• Study the metre and rhyme scheme of the text to deter
mine the most important positions for words in it.
• Experiment with the text: render it in prose to change the
rhythm and analyse the results.
• Translate the text word for word to preserve as much of
the source vocabulary and syntactic structure as possible.
• Reconstruct the metre and rhyme scheme of the sonnet in
Russian; select the words for the rhyming pairs.
• Complete the lines with words and arrange the syntactic
structure of the Russian text.
• Read the resulting text aloud to compare its sound to the
source text.
• Complete the translation and discuss the results.
• Look for some more versions of the sonnet in translation.
Compare your own text with them and comment on the differ
ence.
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Imagery in Translation
POETRY UNIT4:
TRANSLA TING EMIL Y DICKINSON INTO RUSSIAN