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THE NOTION OF IMAGE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LITERARY TRANSLATION

N. Shutemova

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to consider literary translation in reference with the notion of image which has become essential for the philosophy of arts and intercultural artistic communication. Imagery is regarded as one of typological properties of a literary text constituting its essence along with artistic ideas, emotivity and lingual form. The comparative analysis of originals and their translation has allowed us to discover how the source text (ST) imagery may change in the target text (TT) and to distinguish two main types of the ST imagery “refraction”: 1) a translator may represent the ST imagery in the TT fully; 2) a translator may transform the ST imagery. The latter means that the ST imagery may be reduced either partially or fully in the TT. Moreover, the ST imagery may be detailed, developed and extended in the TT. Besides, a translator may modify the logic of a ST image or logical relations within a system of ST images in the TT. Finally, the ST image may be replaced by another image in the TT. On the one hand, these modifications are evidence of inevitable cognitive dissonance typical of translation and caused by heterogeneity of languages, cultures, literary traditions and minds of the author and translator. On the other hand, they display how translation builds bridges between national literatures in intercultural dialogue.

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