The perspective of the novel Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov, interpreted and recreated in three Russian translations, is in the focus of the linguistic analysis in the article. The complicated perspective of the novel was mentioned by critics, but there has been no comparative research in this sphere involving the original text and its Russian translations. The theoretical underpinnings of the research are found in the works by Ch. Bally, V. Vinogradov, G. Zolotova and M. Sidorova. The key concept of the subjective (‘modal’) role is used in the analysis. The research employs functional comparative methods. The ‘I’ of the narrator is represented by several roles: the role of the narrator itself, rendering the events of the novel; the role of the observer, perceiving the described world, and finally, the role of the creator, who is ‘making’ the text of the novel before the reader’s eyes and explaining his art. The main results: 1) each role is verbalized with the help of linguistic and graphic means, forming a functional complex; 2) the role of the creator, addressing the reader, turned out to be the most difficult to translate; 3) the main challenges for the translators are: interpreting the nomination ‘Person’ used to denote both the name of the hero and a human being in general; translating nominations uniting and opposing the narrator and the reader; placing the brackets bordering the comments of the ‘creator’. The research contributes to the studies of translated texts with complex perspective.

Author Name: A. V. Urzha

URL: View PDF

Keywords: mode, narrator, perspective, nomination, translation, comparative analysis, Nabokov

ISSN: 1996-7853

EISSN: 2542-0038

EOI/DOI: 10.21209/1996-7853-2016-11-5-3

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