Imagery in Translation. The beggar doesn't give me bread, the rich man doesn't take my coins, the sunbeam won't go through the needle

The beggar doesn't give me bread, the rich man doesn't take my coins, the sunbeam won't go through the needle, the burglar enters without a key, and now this fool dissolve in tears over the senseless, gloryless day.

Translated by David McDuff:

My day is dissipated, mad.

I ask the beggar for the bread,

I give the rich man pauper's pennies.

With light I thread my needle's eye, I give the burglar my door's key, With white I rouge my face's paleness.

The beggar will not give a thing,

The rich man spurns my offering,

The light will not go through the needle.

The thief gets in without the key, The idiot woman weeps her three Streams over a day absurd, ignoble.

EXERCISES FOR COMPARISON

• Read more about Marina Tsvetayeva and her poetic works.

• Study the metre, rhyme and phonics of the poem and compare
their functions with what is done in English translation. Which expres­
sive functions of the form have been reconstructed and which lost?

• Study the choice of words and compare them with the
English substitutes; see which English words do not compensate
for the intersemiotic distance between the two languages.

• Study the imagery of the poem and stylistic devices used
to convey it.

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• Compare the stylistic features of the source text with those
of the translated versions.

• Comment upon the grammatical problems of translating
of the poem and the ways the translators have solved them.

• Read the translated texts aloud to see which of them
sounds more expressive in English and closer to the nervous
rhythm of the Russian poem.

• Try to translate the poem on your own and comment upon
the results.

Task for translation:

Моим стихам, написанным так рано

* * * *

Моим стихам, написанным так рано, Что и не знала я, что я — поэт, Сорвавшимся, как брызги из фонтана, Как искры из ракет. Ворвавшимся, как маленькие черти, В святилище, где сон и фимиам, Моим стихам о юности и смерти — Нечитаным стихам! —

Разбросанным в пыли по магазинам (Где их никто не брал и не берет!), Моим стихам, как драгоценным винам, Настанет свой черед.

Imagery in Translation

• Study the syntax of the poem and comment on its expres­
sive functions.

• Study the imagery of the poem and comment on the sty­
listic devices used to convey the poetic task.

• Experiment with the Russian text changing its metre,
rhyme, vocabulary and stylistic features. Consider the results.

• Formulate the basic objective for translation of this poem
and follow the principles.

• Translate the Russian text into English word for word.
Consider the result.

• Reconstruct the rhyme scheme of every stanza in English
using words as close to the original rhyming pairs as possible.

• Complete the lines so as to preserve the main words, sty­
listic units and syntactic structures of the poem in English.

• Read the resulting text aloud to compare its sound with
the source text.

• Complete the translation and discuss the results.

EXERCISES FOR TRANSLATION

• Study the rhythm, metre and rhyme scheme of the text in
their expressive functions.

• Study the choice of words and their poetic functions in
the text.

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Практикум по художественному переводу

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