The text of fiction in the “languages” of cinema and music: The possibilities and limits of translation

Abstract

The forms of a “new” life of a verbal original text after its creation are not only its foreign–language versions, but also secondary texts created in the “languages” of other semiotic systems. These directions of bifurcation and transformation of verbal and monomodal works of fiction are characteristic, first of all, for “strong” texts. In Russian literature and culture, the category of “strong” texts undoubtedly includes “Eugene Onegin”, “Crime and Punishment”, “The Master and Margarita”, etc. In the space of world culture, “Don Quixote”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “Faust” serve as vivid examples of “strong” texts. In some cases, during the transformation of a primary text, there occurs a “translation paradox”: secondary nonverbal texts become more popular than a verbal original and are perceived by “readers” as primary ones. At the same time, the success and popularity of a secondary version of a “strong” original often has the opposite effect, drawing the attention of potential readers to a literary source and encouraging them to read an original text of fiction. In modern humanitarian discourse, there is a steady tendency to consider secondary versions from the standpoint of the principles of synergy, adaptation theory, Translation Studies, as well as taking into account the most important methodological concept of complementarity proposed by N. Bohr. The creation of secondary versions of a text by means of “other” semiotic systems is determined after R. Jakobson as an intersemiotic translation and is described through the concepts of adaptation and transposition. In the process of adaptation, which is a conscious transformation due to the cultural or pragmatic context in relation to a secondary text, an original text is used as the basis for its creation. Adaptation traditionally involves the elision of a verbal original and is accompanied by cultural as well as chronological transcoding (information transfer). This study examines films, operas, musicals, as well as ballets created on the basis of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”.