Pragmatic equivalence in the translation of Russian cantos by Mikhail Glinka (with lyrics by Nestor Kukolnik) into Polish

Abstract

The article analyses the lyrics of five cantos by Glinka with lyrics by Kukolnik translated into Polish. The authors of the translations are Dumnicka, Śliwiak, and Średnicki. The first part of the work presents attributes and the most important problems of the translation of cantos and songs. The second part discusses the issue of equivalence, in particular, pragmatic equivalence which is audience-oriented. For the purposes of the article, its understanding was broadened to include the possibility (or lack of possibility) of singing the translated lyrics to the original melody. The third part of the work presents an analysis of Russian and Polish lyrics and indicates which translation methods have been used. The author discusses a number of specific problems, i.e. the recreation of rhymes, the reproduction of the structure of the original, semantic, and structural shifts, the use of functional analogues, associations, and the adaptation of the lyrics to the musical layer. All problems are illustrated with relevant fragments of the cantos and their translations. The analysis of the translations aimed at examining whether the changes introduced by translators had an effect on preserving pragmatic equivalence in its broader understanding – whether the translation methods allowed one to sing the canto to the original melody. The fourth, summarising part is dedicated to the assessment of the translations from the point of preserving the pragmatic equivalence. The analysis showed that all the translations are lyrics ready to be sung, thus it can be concluded that losses in the semantic, stylistic, rhythmic, and other layers in the translation were necessary to preserve pragmatic equivalence, construed not only as providing the recipient with a chance to gain better understanding of the lyrics, but also with the possibility of singing them.