engleski

Soviet Language in English Retranslations: Mikhail Bulgakov´s The Heart of a Dog

Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantastic tale The Heart of a Dog: The Monstrous Story is a frank, satirical, and prophetic attack (with science fiction elements) on a momentous Communist experiment designed to create a new proletarian class, uncivilized, vulgar, without faith, destitute of cultural and moral values, and inspired by political idols. When completing it in 1925 Bulgakov read a few passages to a group of writers and critics, at least one of them an informer for the secret police, at a literary gathering in a Moscow apartment. A few days later the informer’s report was filed. It contained an accurate transcription of parts of The Heart of a Dog and a hostile assessment. ‘Bulgakov hates and despises the Soviet regime and denies achievements of the Soviet state’, the informer wrote. ‘Soviet power has a loyal, rigorous, and clear-seeing guardian. For this purpose we focused on the translation of culturally specific linguistic items, ‘Sovietisms’: that is, culturally, historically, and socially specific Soviet vocabulary of the 1930s, which arrived in the language with official encouragement to describe various aspects of Soviet life (professions, institutions, propagandistic slogans, etc). These constitute one of the most distinctive stylistic features of the novel.

Retranslation, Literary Translation, Transcription, Literary criticism

nije evidentirano