Literary subtext interpretation: the power of suggestion

Abstract

(uk) У статті, присвяченій особливостям інтерпретації та перекладу імпліцитних смислів художнього твору, висвітлюється спроба дати визначення емоційному підтексту, дослідити шляхи та засоби його творення, проаналізувати специфіку перекладу художнього тексту, який містить приховані смислі. Такі тексти є надзвичайно складними для перекладу і вимагають від перекладача знань фонової інформації та особливостей літературної рецепції, а також творчих здібностей, оскільки переклад прихованих смислів часто є більш важливим ніж передача поверхневої інформації, адже саме переклад підтексту робить художній текст більш наближеним до оригіналу.

(en) The article, concerned with the peculiarities of interpretation and translation of implicit meanings of a literary work, highlights the attempt to define emotional subtext, explore the ways and means of its creation, as well as to analyze the specifics of translating literary text containing hidden meanings. Emotional subtext is quite hard to study, as it is actually a feeling that is indirectly suggested by the text of the work. An additional difficulty in identifying and interpreting such an implicit meaning is that it is often built against the background of other types of subtexts, for example, religious and philosophical, but not with the help of explicit information of the literary text. Various subtexts, present in one and the same literary work, frequently interact building layers of meanings, which should be revealed in turn, one after another, allowing the reader to get deeper into the text. J. D. Salinger’s works present highly effective material for the study of implicit meanings, because the latter are consciously created, which means that their presence is in some way objective and amenable to scientific comprehension. Such texts are extremely complicated for translation and require the translator to know the background information, the peculiarities of literary perception as well as possession of creative abilities. After all, the translation of hidden meanings is often far more important than rendering of explicit information, since it is the translation of the subtext that makes the artistic text more adequate. Practically, to identify the subtext, the translator is to find the stylistic means used for its creation. As a rule, these means build the so-called “chains”, which intensify each other and work together to create hidden meanings. Those “chains” may exist at various text levels, such as phonological, lexical, and grammatical. Consequently, to successfully and adequately render the implicit meanings is, to a large extent, to be able to detect and to correctly interpret the artistic devices responsible for subtext generation.