HOW TO TRANSLATE A PUZZLE AND NOT TO GET PUZZLED

Abstract

The article deals with the specifics of reproducing anagrams in English-Ukrainian literary translation. The relevance of the research is determined by the reference of anagrams as a form of linguistic puzzles to the global category of language games and thus, to translation difficulties the resolution of which allows to better comprehend creative potential of translation and possibilities of language as a systemic formation. The object of research is anagram as a variety of language games that lies in rearranging letters of a word / word combination / sentence as a result of which a new word / word combination / sentence bearing a particular stylistic effect – comic, enigmatic, etc. – is formed. The subject of the research is structural, semantic and functional characteristics of translating anagrams within literary works. The aim of the research is to determine potential and real strategies as well as factors that have an impact on reproducing anagrams as a form of linguistic puzzles, variety of language games and type of translation difficulties from English into Ukrainian proceeding from their genre, stylistic, structural, semantic, functional, etc. parameters. Translatological investigation of anagrams is based on the relevant provisions of literary studies and linguistics with regard to cognitive and cultural circumstances of their formation and functioning. From the standpoint of cognitive psychology, the anagrammatic effect is explained by the mechanism of priming, and its mnemonic role within literary text is determined by the ability “to catch” and intensify the fragment of the author’s mental or behavioral experience and to incorporate it into the reader’s memory. From the standpoint of the theory of translation difficulties, anagram is defined as a stylistic device that leads to the formation of a nonce unit whose translation is problematized by the absence of a regular equivalent or impossibility of its use. From the standpoint of the theory of language games, anagram is defined as an unconventional use / combination of linguistic signs whose translation requires from the translator considerable creative effort for preserving functional potential of the original anagram. Algorithmic approach to modeling anagrams’ translation allows to formulate five potential strategies: adequate translation, compensation, formal translation, transfer and omission. The analysis of the research material showed the use of the four out of five strategies (with exception of omission which is evidently the most radical variant of resolving any type of translation difficulties); the choice among the strategies is made on the basis of both objective (linguistic) and subjective (contextual, situational, normative, individual, etc.) factors.