Transferred Epithet and its Translation

TRANSLATION OF EPITHETS

The epithet is a stylistic device based on the interplay of emotive and logical meaning in an attributive word, phrase or even sentence, used to characterize an object and pointing out to the reader, and frequently imposing on him, some of the properties or features of the object with the aim of giving an individual perception and evaluation of these features or properties.

The epithet, usually subjective and evaluative, on the whole show purely individual emotional attitude of the speaker towards the object spoken of, e.g.: To fulfill this condition was hope­lessly out of my power." (B. Shaw) "The new and very serious and Hyper-educated generation." (J. Joice)

From the point of view of their compositional structure epithets may be divided into:

1) Simple (adjectives, nouns, participles): e.g. He looked at them in animalpanic.

2) Compound: e.g. apple-faced man;

3) Sentence and phrase epithets: e.g. It is his do - it – yourself attitude.

4) Inverted or reversed epithets - composed of 2 nouns linked by an of-phrase: e.g. “a shadow of a smile”.

To convey the author’s intent, the translator must be very careful in selecting words with the same denotative and connotative meanings.

Still there are some specific problems of translating some types of the English epithets, discussed below.

Transferred Epithet and its Translation

A relatively free valency in the English language accounts for the free use of the so-called transferred epithet in which logical and syntactical modifications do not coincide, i.e., an epithet syntactically is joined to a word to which it does not belong logically. In the sentence “He paid his smiling attention to her”, logically the adjective “smiling” refers to a person, but syntactically it is attached to the word “attention”.

The word whose modifier is thus displaced can either be actually present in the sentence, or it can be implied logically. The effect often stresses the emotions or feelings of the individual by expanding them on to the environment. For example, “On the idle hill of summer, sleepy with the flow of streams, far I hear… idle sleepy hill... are transferred epithets: it is the narrator, not the hill, who exhibits these features. Or, in the "restless night" — the night was not restless, but the person who was awake through it was, and in "happy morning" — mornings have no feelings, but the people who are awake through them do.

The striking and unusual quality of the transferred epithet calls attention to it, and it is used to introduce emphatically an idea an author plans to develop. The expressive force of such epithets lies in their peculiar distribution, involving shifting a modifier from the animate to the inanimate, as in the phrases: cheerful money, suicidal sky, pressurized happiness.

Transferred epithets are widely used not only in English poetry and prose, but also in journalism and in everyday conversation, while in Ukrainian they are mainly confined to poetry, and that is why are rarely preserved in translation:

…his commanding officer had called him … and sent him on his puzzled way. Командир покликав його… і відіслав з дорученням, яке цілком спантеличило його.

The Ukrainian translation in keeping with the existing norms of valency re-establishes the logical link between the attribute and the modified word but inevitably destroys the stylistic effect.

Translation of the transferred epithet often requires word order change (the sound of the solemn bells - урочисте звучання дзвонів), structural transformations of the whole sentence or extension, e.g.: a British breakfast of depressing kidney and fish – англійський сніданок з нирок і риби, що навіює нудьгу; I sat down to a very meditative breakfast. – Поринувши у роздуми, я сів до сніданку.

Stock epithets are calqued: happy morning – щасливий ранок, dumb love – німе кохання, sleepless night - безсонна ніч, careful steps – обережні кроки.