#1:As Gregor Samsa
awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed
into a gigantic insect.
- Passive structure
- Imagery(transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect)
#2:Gregory Samsa woke
from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug.
- Present tense
- Casual language
#3:When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled
dreams one morning he found he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous
bug.
- Imagery( enormous bug)
#4:One morning, upon
awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed,
transformed into a monstrous vermin.
- Formal language
- Imagery( monstrous vermin)
- Denotation(monstrous vermin)
In his introductory sentence Kafta
is attempting to portray the main character, Gregor’s, initial transformation from
a human to an insect; or should I say bug or vermin? Within the four translations
three different nouns attempt to describe Gregor’s newfound physical state. The choice changes the style and imagery in
the sentence drastically. When “bug” is used the sentence sounds casual; even
the adjective describing the word bug is more juvenile. The imagery hints at a “giant
or enormous bug” which could compete with an animated creature. In contrast
when the bug is described as a “monstrous vermin” the sentence suddenly seems
serious. Not only does vermin have a negative connotation, the adjective monstrous
suggests the character Gregor as something capable of chaos and destruction. This
translation is most effective because it abruptly introduces Gregor’s struggle
to adjust to his new identity.
Each of the translations utilizes
entirely different sentence structure, punctuation, and tenses. The majority of them sound a bit awkward and
wordy due to their obvious translations.
Translated texts will never be as effective as the original in emanating
the author’s style. This is obvious in this example; two of the translations
have a casual tone and one is formal. While each of the translations describe
the same scenario the implied meaning varies greatly.
Some good thoughts here, but I do wish you had expanded a bit more on your final analysis paragraph, citing examples from the work you did above- it would have make it stronger than the general analysis of translations it is now. Perhaps more detail in your analysis of each translation would have aided in this.
ReplyDeletei liked that you pulled certain parts that stuck out to you in the different translations as well as discuss the different connotations of each text.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you observed the tense of the sentences in your observations. That's not something I thought about. It's actually a pretty big concept. If a story is told in past/present tense, it can completely alter a reader's perception of what exactly happened in the story so I think that's really cool that you did that! I also liked the word play that you used when you were questioning whether or not to call Samsa an insect, bug, or vermin; it stressed on the importance of diction and that confusion that occurs when translating. I would probably elaborate more when you say that their structure, punctuation, etc., varied between each of the sentences since you did not really go in depth on your observations. All in all, I really liked your blog post!
ReplyDelete