Perceptual images in camp prose and its English translation

The paper focuses on the key images of perception of the novel “Krutoy marshrut” by E. Ginzburg and its English translation “Journey into the Whirlwind” by P. Stevenson and M. Hayward. It is noted that one important way to describe the special atmosphere in the so-called “camp prose” is the perceptual vocabulary, a means of depicting impressions and related experiences. The leading channels of perception, actualized in the Ginzburg’s work, are auditory and olfactory. Sounds and smells receive the additional semantic load in the text. They act as markers of the borderline of prison’s and “worldly” spaces, signals of changes in the heroine’s physical or emotional state (they are often precursors of violence), a source of important information (most often it is knocking), a means of updating the mode of memories (the smells are mainly used for this purpose). The linguistic means of expressing perceptual images is the hearing and smell vocabulary (loud and tiny sounds, knock, roar, clang, screech, scream, ringing, silence, etc.; stink, smell, fragrance, etc.) and detailed metaphors (zoomorphic, natural, musical), often based on the syncretism of perception (sound, smell, vision). The English translation analysis indicates a rather high degree of equivalence in the perceptual imagery transmission, with replacement or transformation of the most important images not excluded. The study showed interpreting and transmitting the author’s metaphors and syncretic (audio-olfactory and visual-audio) images to be the most difficult for translation. The transformations used by the translators are necessary for the English-speaking reader’s understanding of the complex perceptual images of the confessional novel.

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