Abstract:
The Georgian translations of five poems by Rusudan Chanturishvili of
the Russian-speaking Armenian poet, Nina Gabrielian was published in the
2011 collection of translated poems Unquenchable Colors. The poems were
taken from the collected works, Pomegranate Seeds published in 1992.
From the poems presented in the collection, we took The Carousel for
consideration, which is a text loaded with content and poetic means of expression.
N. Gabrielian’s title The Carousel is a major marker of the poetics of
the verse and, on the one hand, presents the model of the world and, on
the other, the poet’s views on the world. N. Gabrielian’s Carousel is a text
containing a musical component, as evidenced by the musical term Tocata
enclosed in parentheses after the title. The title’s relation to the music
is compositionally completed and manifested in the dedication / epigraph
– “to K. S. Khachaturian”. As a matter of fact, the poem was written in the
1980s under the impression of Karen Khachaturian’s sonata, which is why
the author tries to repeat the rhythm of its second part - Tokata - performed
at a fast pace. In her translation, Rusudan Chanturishvili strictly follows the
original’s title, remark and dedication / epigraph.
Nina Gabrieliani’s Carousel, according to the author, is a conventional
astrophic poem consisting of 21 lines irregular in syllabic arrangement; Rusudan
Chanturishvili’s translation is also an astrophic rhythmic verse without
fixed number of syllables per line.
One of the most pronounced organizing means of the structure of Nina
Gabrieliani’s poem is repetition, which the poet uses to enhance the artistic
effect and repeats the same word, phrase, line throughout the poem. The
alliteration and assonance coefficient is also high, which, in addition to the
phonetic sound, also regulates its rhythmic structure.
The anaphora represented by the verbs in the present tense serves the
cause of organizing the poem’s rhythm. The poet also uses the refrain.
The translation is to a certain extent accurate in repeating individual
words, phrases and lines. Alliteration, groups of sounds, tautograms, and assonances
are translated “conditionally according to the specific capabilities
of the language.” However, where it is impossible to replicate the original
elements, R. Chanturishvili uses the right strategy and replaces them with words of effective, expressive power in translation. The same is true about
the anaphora and refrain.
R. Chanturishvili’s translation preserves the original accelerated
rhythm, intonation and mood of the lyrical hero, “although sometimes adherence
to them leads to sacrificing the intellectual accuracy of the original.”
Modified or new lexical items, lines appear (or are omitted) in the translation,
“which plays a certain role in the poem’s rhythm-intonational organization
and the sound.”
The paper discusses examples of synonymous expansion, decrease,
increase, replacement in translation and draws relevant conclusions.