title: The translation of Ukrainian vocabulaire in Gogol’s Evening on a farm near Dikanka into Dutch
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Prins, Marieclair
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2017-07-15T18:10:17Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2017-07-15T18:10:17Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2016-06
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: 10.21638/11701/spbu21.2016.112
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/6797
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: The translation of vernacular in literary texts poses specific problems for the
  translator. If an author uses a particular vernacular, it is a literary device which must
  of course, in one form or the other, be reflected in the translation. While other forms
  of deviant language (such as the specific jargon of various professional groups, slang,
  youth language etc.) usually have some sort of register of their own in the target
  language, the regional aspect of dialects is often untranslatable.
  The translation of Nikolai Gogols Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka presented me
  with on such a problem. In these stories, written in Russian, but situated in the Ukraine,
  Gogol made us of two literary devices: some of the stories or chapters open with Ukranian
  quotes from songs, poems, etc.; Gogol also used various Ukrainian terms, which
  he transcribed into Russian. For his Russian audience (which might not understand
  the Ukrainian words) he inserted two explanatory Ukrainian-Russian glossaries. The
  purely Ukrainian quotes I left in their original form in the text, and provided a translation
  at the bottom of the page; this is the accepted manner tot present foreign quotes
  in Dutch literary translations. But the case of Ukrainian terms in Russian transcription
  was more complicated.
  For the Russian reader Ukrainian is a foreign but familiar language. Many of Gogol’s
  lemma’s sound familiar or are actually known to him, just as Dutch speakers/readers
  know certain German or Flemish words (or think they do). To tackle this problem,
  I first of all looked at existing translations of Dikanka to see what the other translators
  had done. To my surprise I found out they all had simply skiped the glossaries, omitting
  the ‘ukrainianisms’ as if the whole text had been written in plain Russian.
  In my translation I decided to convey the ‘exotic’ Ukrainian flavour of Dikanka by
  making use of glossaries such as Gogol had done. In order to do so, I first of all had to
  find out which Ukrainian terms used by Gogol were (un)familiair to the Russian reader.
  So I put Gogol’s glossaries before Russian native speakers (obviously without Gogol’s
  translation). Some lemma’s proved to be known to everyone and appear in the standard
  Russian explanatory dictionaries; other terms were unknown or were misread. For
  instance, Gogol’s ‘lyulka’ (Russ.: люлька) meant to some Russians ‘a baby’s crib’, but
  Gogol translated the word as ‘tobacco pipe’. Some respondents had never heard of
  ‘kukhol’ (Russ.: кухоль), while for others it was ‘a kind of bird’, but according to Gogol’s
  translation it was ‘a ceramic cup’. The ‘elongated headdress’ referred to by Gogol as ‘korablik’ (Russ.: кораблик) was translated by most Russians as ‘a small boat’, which
  actually is a correct translation of the Russian word ‘korablik’, but not what the author
  intended.
  I then started to compose a small lexicon of ‘un-Dutch’ words, which would have a
  similar connotation to the Dutch reader as the Ukrainian words, used by Gogol, have
  for the Russian audience. I thereby relied heavily on the Flemish dialects, since they
  have a soft and pleasant ring to the Dutch ear, just as the Ukrainian has to the Russian
  ear. But since I had to avoid pinning down the stories to a particular region, I addes
  some Southern Dutch to the mix with here and there a touch of German or something
  unusual from other dialects that the Dutch audience might or might not know. In the
  process I derived a lot from different collections of glossaries on the internet conveying
  all sorts of Flemish and Dutch dialects. Sometimes illustrations on the internet proved
  useful. The result was as a Flemish/Limburgian/West Friesian/German/etc. — Dutch
  glossary from which I composed a definitive lexicon for the translation of the glossaries
  in Dikanka. And so, ‘yulka’ ended up as ‘smuigertje’, ‘kukhol’ became ‘tas’ and ‘korablik’
  became ‘schuitje’. As it was impossible to find a satisfactory equivalent for all Gogol’s
  ukranianisms, I removed some of the author’s lemma’s from the glossaries. To make up
  for this, I ‘smuggled’ in some nice sounding findings of my own.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: other
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Scandinavian Philology;Volume 14; Issue 1
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: translation
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Dutch
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Evening on a farm near Dikanka
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Ukrainian vocabulaire
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: use of dialects
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: The translation of Ukrainian vocabulaire in Gogol’s Evening on a farm near Dikanka into Dutch
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 12-Prins.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/6797/1/12-Prins.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 996,36 kB