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21SECTION 2 ESSAYS ON INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS
Olga Sidorova Urals State University
David Lodge in Russia
Статья посвящена переводам романов известного английского писателя Дэвида Лоджа на русский язык, а также истории осмысления его творчества российским литературоведением. Сопровождается библиографией, включающей в себя переводы романов Д. Лоджа на русский язык, и основные публикации отечественных критиков, посвященные творчеству писателя.
How do literary texts of some culture function in another culture? This question often arises when books are translated into foreign languages, and then, just as the adherents of the Reader Response theory maintain, the readers’ reaction becomes extremely important to the meaning the text acquires in a new environment. It goes without saying that the reader response is an integral part of a book functioning in its native culture, but a translation can often acquire some unexpected new understanding in a target language and culture. And if, as Stanley Fish proves when analyzing literary text existence, “it is impossible to mean one thing in two different ways, although we tend to think that it happens all the time”1, then we must also admit that there is always a gap between any text and its translation. The task of any translator is to make it as narrow as possible.
The aim of this article is to trace the way of David Lodge’s books to the Russian readers - not a very easy way, in fact.
David Lodge published his first novel “The Picture,goers” in 1960. During the following four decades his books became popular
1 S. Fish Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics. //Reader-Response Criticism. Ed. By J. P. Tompkins. Baltimore and London, The John Hopkins UP, 1988. P.78.
with the British reading public. Along with this, in the period of 1960 - 1987 Lodge taught literature in the English Department of the University of Birmingham and became well known as a prominent academic literary critic and theorist. In one of his works he proclaimed: “I have always regarded myself as having a foot in both camps - the world of academic scholarship and higher education, and the world of literary culture at large, in which books are written, published, discussed and consumed for profit and pleasure in all senses of those words.”2
My own acquaintance with David Lodge’s books started in 1995 in Oxford, when Karen Hewitt gave us, a small group of Russian scholars from different universities, several books to read during our spare time. I happened to be the last to choose - and there was no choice left, since by the time I came up to the desk “Nice Work” by David Lodge was the only book available, all the other books had already been borrowed by my colleagues. The explanation was obvious: Russian people didn’t know this author at that time. The result surpassed my expectations; I liked the novel very much and bought a copy of my own. Later, when I bought copies of the writer’s other works, I started to write articles on his books for different Russian journals and collections and to speak on them at academic conferences. In August, 1999, while a student of Scottish Universities Summer School in Edinburgh I had a good opportunity of attending Lodge’s public lecture within the framework of the Edinburgh Book Festival. By that time most of his works had been already translated into many European languages and were really popular with readers of many countries, as it was clear enough from the reaction of my fellow-students from more than twenty countries of the world. Russian translations appeared later.
Lodge’s novels in Russian
The first Russian translation of his novel “Changing Places ” (written in 1975), made by Olga Makarova, was published in
2 D. Lodge. After Bakhtin (essays on fiction and criticism). L.-N-Y., Routledge, 1990. P. 7.
2000.The other novels followed: “Paradise News” (1991) appeared in Russian in 2002, “Therapy” (1995) - in 2003, translations of the second and the third novels of the Academic Trilogy (which they form together with “Changing Places”) “Small World” (1984) and “Nice Work” (1988) came out in 2004. Generally speaking, the quality of translation is high, thus the Russian readers have acquired a good opportunity to enjoy Lodge’s books. The very titles of some of Lodge’s books were transformed: “thus, “Changing places” have become “Академический обмен” - a common Russian term denoting an exchange scheme which forms the basis of the novel plot. Before “Nice Work” was rendered into Russian as “Хорошая работа ” in 2004, it was much discussed by scholars and students, and different possible Russian titles were put forward, “Хорошенькое дельце”, “Приятное занятие” and several other variants were mentioned.
Among other things, Lodge’s novels are well-known to contain a strong comic element, and it is this element that has found a new reverberation in Russian. This point can be easily illustrated with the characters names used in the English originals and Russian translations of the Trilogy novels. In his scholarly articles collection “The Art of Fiction” Lodge wrote: “In novel names are never neutral. They always signify, if it is only ordinariness... The naming of characters is always an important part of creating them, involving many considerations and hesitations.”3 Nearly all the names in Trilogy are meaningful. Thus, the main characters of “The Nice Work” are called Vic (Victor) Wilcox and Robyn Penrose, and the author of the novel explains the choice of these names in the following way: “I named the man Vic Wilcox to suggest, beneath the ordinariness and Englishness of the name, a rather aggressive, even coarse masculinity (by association with victor, will and cock), and I soon settled on Penrose for the surname of my heroine for its contrasting connotations of literature and beauty (pen and rose).” 4The writer also mentions the fact that the choice of the heroine’s name - Robyn - suggested an unexpected twist to the novel’s plot,
3 D. Lodge. The Art of Fiction.L.-N.-Y.,Penguin, 1992. P. 37.
as “Vic would be expecting a male Robin to turn up at his factory.”5 What is more, Wilcox is also the surname of the main male character from E. M. Forster’s famous novel “Howards End”, defined by Lodge as “another man of business who becomes enamored of an intellectual woman.” Unfortunately, the names of these characters are rendered into Russian with the help of transcription, that is their sound envelopes are transferred, but all the numerous and subtle connotations mentioned above are missing. It should be mentioned that “Howards End” is not translated into Russian and thus remains unknown to many Russian readers.
Other names of the Trilogy characters are rendered into Russian in a number of different ways. Thus, Philipp Swallow has become Филипп Jloy - given a full transcribed form the name could acquire a rude and vulgar connotation in Russian. There is also a whole group of names, which sound comic to a Russian ear since they resonate with this or that Russian reference. In order to produce this effect the translators sometimes changed the original English names, thus Rummige has become Сраммидж, Moris Zapp got its Russian name Морис Цапп, and so on. Having changed these and some other names, the translators at the same time included them into a new cultural and intertextual sphere, so that the translated texts have developed unexpected links within a new cultural environment.
Reading Russian variants of David Lodge’s novels, you constantly come across the translator’s footnotes. They are aimed to help the Russian readers to understand numerous historic, literary and cultural allusions scattered in the original, as well as some facts from contemporary British life which are unfamiliar to a foreign reader. The footnotes analyses can give interesting results. For example, in her translation of ‘Changing Places ” Olga Makarova gives a lot of information about the British system of education (e.g. “в большинстве западных университетов курс обучения - три
4 D. Lodge . The Art of Fiction. L.-N.-Y.,Penguin, 1992. P. 38.
5 Ibid.
года”), popular literary characters (“миссис Элтон - персонаж романа Джейн Остен «Эмма»”), well-known historic events (“Дюнкерк - город во Франции, порт в проливе Па-де-Кале. Здесь в 1940 году, во время Второй мировой войны, происходила эвакуация английских, французских и бельгийских войск в Великобританию (т. н. Дюнкеркская операция)”, etc. These footnotes can be described as certain markers of non -coincidences between the cultural background of the British and the Russian readers - the fact which, apart from linguistic difference, creates natural difficulties for foreign readers of every translated text.
Academic response
David Lodge’s creative activity attracted many Russian scholars and literary critics attention. Professor A. Luxemburg was among the first Russian scholars who analyzed his Trilogy in the context of the British Campus novel tradition. Other scholars followed with their analyses focused on different aspects of David Lodge’s work. A thesis devoted to his Trilogy was defended by Olga Maslyaeva in Nizhny Novgorod in 2002. It can be stated that from that time on novels by David Lodge have become increasingly popular with the Russian university teachers. His novels are studied both in literature and language courses. It should be also pointed out that Russian specialists in the field of British literature use his academic non-fiction in their research, though it hasn’t been translated into Russian (with a few minor exceptions).
In his academic writing (“ Working with Structuralism”, 1981, “After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism”, 1990, “The Art of Fiction”, 1992, “The Practice of Writing” 1996, to name but a few) Lodge often refers to Russian literary theory, especially to Russian formalism. He uses Russian literary terms “fabula”, “sjuzhef\ “skaz” and some others. In his collection “After Bakhtin”, speculating about the development of European literary theory, he wrote: “Bakhtin’s theory ... has given new hope to literary critics who were beginning to wonder whether there was a life after post-
structuralism.”6 There is little doubt that Lodge himself feels a sort of personal link with Mikhail Bakhtin not only through his academic writing, but also through Mikhail’s elder brother Nikolai, who had been lecturing at Birmingham University from 1938 to 1950: “He lectured in classics, modern Greek and linguistics at Birmingham, becoming eventually a one-man Department of Linguistics. He died suddenly from a heart attack, at the age of 54, in 1950, ten years before I was appointed to the same Faculty.”7
I’d like to conclude by stating that the main novels by David Lodge have come to the Russian readers, though with a certain delay, and it’s our - teachers, scholars, students - task to read, introduce, analyze and contextualize them to a greater or lesser extent, thus making our understanding of literary process wider. Reading David Lodge both in the original and in good translation is an enjoyable preoccupation, so we’ll hope more translations will appear in the nearest future and more readers will get acquainted with them.
The following bibliographic list includes both the Russian versions of D. Lodge’s novels and some Russian critical and academic works devoted to them. Hope someone would profit from it.
Лодж Д. Академический обмен: повесть о двух кампусах: роман. Пер. с англ. О. Макаровой,- М.: Независимая газета, 2000, 320 с.
Лодж Д. Райские новости: роман. Пер. с англ. Е. Дод. - М.: Иностранка: Б. С. Г. Пресс, 2002, 456 с.
Лодж Д. Терапия: роман. Пер с англ. Е. Дод. - М.: Иностранка: Б. С. Г. Пресс, 2003, 493 с.
Лодж Д. Мир тесен: роман. Пер.с англ. О. Макаровой. М.: Независимая газета, 2004, 432 с.
Лодж Д. Хорошая работа: роман. Пер. с англ. М. Ворсано-вой. - М.: Независимая газета, 2004, 384 с.
6 D. Lodge. After Bakhtin (essays on fiction and critisism). L. - N-Y. Rouledge, 1990. P. 5.
7 Ibid.
Люксембург А. Англо-американская университетская проза. - Ростов-на-Дону, изд-во Ростовского университета, 1988, 282 с.
Макарова О. Послесловие переводчика. // Лодж Д. Академический обмен: повесть о двух кампусах. М.: Независимая газета, 2000. С. 301 - 307.
Масляева О. Поэтика трилогии Дэвида Лоджа (романы «Академический обмен», «Мир тесен», «Прекрасная работа»). Автореферат ... кандидата филологических наук. Нижний Новгород, 2002, 20с.
Сидорова О. Филологическая трилогия Д. Лоджа: опыт интертекстуального прочтения. // Зарубежная литература: контекстуальные и интертекстуальные связи. Сборник научных трудов. Екатеринбург: изд-во УрГУ, 2000. С. 80 - 89.
Сидорова О. Комическое в романе Д.Лоджа «Хорошая работа». // Традиции и взаимодействия в зарубежных литературах. Межвузовский сборник научных трудов. Пермь: изд-во ПГУ, 2000. С. 225 - 332.
Соловьева В. Любовь к бесполезному. Электронный ресурс. Режим доступа: Ы1р://ехНЬп8/п^ги/1й/2005-06-
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