SPECIFICS OF TRANSLATING AUTHORIAL EPITHETS IN FICTION: CASE STUDY OF THE UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION OF DAN SIMMONS’ HYPERION

Abstract

The research paper focuses on the specifics of translating conceptually authorial epithets in the science fiction novel Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Ukrainian translation by B. Stasiuk. The material of the research consisted of 50 authorial epithets used in the original work and 50 translations of these tropes into Ukrainian. The material was selected by the method of continuous sampling and analyzed using the statistical method. The article discusses the concept of epithet in general and, in particular, the conceptually authorial (or simply authorial) epithet, its semantic (color, evaluative, characteristic) and grammatical (adjective, adverb, participle) varieties. The study analyzes the translation techniques and transformations used by the translator to better convey the imagery and poetry of the original author's epithet in Ukrainian. It has been established that in the translation of the science fiction novel Hyperion, equivalent translation is mostly used, and less frequent are the techniques of compression, decompression, and figurative substitution. Among the transformations noticed in the translation by B. Stasiuk's translation, lexical transformations predominate, namely concretization, generalization, and modulation, used to better reproduce the semantic content of the author's epithets. Grammatical transformations (addition, transposition, grammatical substitution) have been used to solve the problem of different structure of the source and target languages. It has been noted that in the translation of epithets, the translator sometimes uses compensation to preserve formal poetic devices, such as alliteration. The research has revealed that the translation of authorial epithets requires significant transformations on the part of the translator to create an adequate parallel text and preserve the poetry and imagery of the epithet intended to characterize the object.