Methods of transferring linguistic humor in J.K. Jerome’s novel "Three men in a boat ..." translated by Y. Lisnyak

 He says he’ll teach you to take his boards and make a raft of them; but, seeing that you know how to do this pretty well already, the offer, though doubtless kindly meant, seems a superfluous one on his part, and you are reluctant to put him to any trouble by accepting it. (Jerome 152)

 The above example could also be regarded as self-disparaging irony as the author of the irony himself presents his seeming innocence. Another instance of this type of irony appears in chapter eight and refers to J.’s ignorance of German language:

I don’t understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since. (Jerome 75)

The last type of irony – ingénu irony – occurs quite frequently in the novel as well. The author often makes the characters of Harris and George the targets of his irony as in the instance below, in which George’s job is made fun of:

Harris and I would go down in the morning, and take the boat up to Chertsey, and George, who would not be able to get away from the City till the afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day; except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two), would meet us there. (Jerome 17)

Until now I have been focusing on verbal irony. Jerome’s work abounds with situational irony as well, in fact, I dare say it makes it one of the masterpieces of humoristic literature. However, as situational irony is not much workable from the point of view of translation, I won’t deal with it in detail.

2.2. Translation of Irony

Translation of humour is often compared to translation of poetry as “the formal aspects are an integral part of both types of texts. The link is also established on the basis of the difficulty of both tasks” (Mateo 174). The difficulty of translating humour depends on what means it is based on. If humour lies in linguistic aspects such as puns, it is highly probable that it will be difficult to translate or even untranslatable. On the other hand, humour based on irony or on reversal of situation or tone will be easier to deal with (Mateo 174).

As stated above, the identification of irony depends mostly on context and background knowledge. However, when an author works with satire and allusion to create irony, the socio-cultural aspect becomes relevant as well. Thus, the translation of irony is heavily influenced by the proximity of cultures – the more distant the culture is, the more difficult the understanding of humour and irony will be (Mateo 174). In my opinion, the Ukrainian and English cultures and their perception of irony are close enough to allow the translator to render all the cases of irony in Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat without any substantial changes. Moreover, Jerome uses similar mechanisms for creating irony (contradiction, overstatement, pretended innocence etc.) as those that are generally employed in world literature, as well as similar topics to be ironic about (laziness, weather, work, Murphy’s laws and so on), therefore the understanding and translation of irony in this case are not very complicated.

The following example of irony is based mainly on overemphasis, contradiction (lies vs. veracity) and on the surprise at the logic of the statement claiming that what makes a good fisherman is not mere lying, but well-thought-out and meticulous saying of untruths:

Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous — almost of pedantic — veracity, that the experienced angler is seen. (Jerome 168)

Дехто вважає, що для того, щоб стати добрим рибалкою, потрібна тільки здатність брехати  легко й не червоніючи. Але така думка помилкова. Самі голі вигадки  нічого не варті, вони до снаги й  найзеленішому новачкові. Досвідченого вудкаря можна впізнати по докладних подробицях, тонких штрихах, які надають розповіді правдоподібності, і загальному враженню педантичної, майже хворобливої правдивості. (Лісняк, 213-214)

To create overemphasis, Jerome uses phrases including descriptive adjectives, such as ‘circumstantial detail’, ‘the embellishing touches of probability’ and ‘scrupulous/pedantic veracity’ which are easily translatable into Ukrainian (underlined) and for which there are plenty of different solutions. The translatability is moreover made easier by generally shared attitude to lying as something unacceptable.

Another aspect that plays a role in translating humour is that of transporting “sense” and “form” which are both very important when dealing with humour. Keeping the sense is more or less easy but preserving the form can cause problems as “irony and humour may simply spring from an alliteration in the usual syntactic order of a sentence, from the choice of an unusual collocation or, indeed, from the very use of a certain word” (Mateo 174). These formal features are very difficult to transfer to the target text assuming that the translator wants to preserve the original sense as well.

As the irony in Three Men in a Boat is created mainly by the devices of contradiction, opposition, overemphasis and pretended innocence/ignorance, there are not many cases of irony in which form plays a crucial role. However, some examples can be found. In the following extract, which describes the characters being chased by the smell of paraffin oil, the chief device to create irony is the repetition of the expression ‘oily wind’ and the coordinating conjunction ‘and’:

Sometimes a westerly oily wind blew, and at other times an easterly oily wind, and sometimes it blew a northerly oily wind, and maybe a southerly oily wind . . . (Jerome 31)

Another instance of irony, in which transporting the form is essential, concerns George’s playing the banjo accompanied by Montmorency’s howling. George’s question is ironically answered by Harris’s question of the same form, only the verbs ‘to howl’ and ‘to play’ are swapped:

“What’s he want to howl like that for when I’m playing?” George would exclaim indignantly, while taking aim at him with a boot.

“What do you want to play like that for when he is howling?” Harris would retort, catching the boot. (Jerome 140 – 141)

Якого він дідька завжди так виє, коли я граю? – обурено  питав Джордж, націлюючись у Монтморенсі  черевиком.

- А якого дідька ти  завжди так граєш, коли він  виє? – відповідав Гаріс, перехоплюючи  той черевик. (Лісняк, 181-182)

In the last example of irony, whose form presents an inseparable part of it and thus should be translated into the target language, Jerome overemphasises such a common thing as ‘being full up’ by using very refined and lofty language:

We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father – a noble, pious man. (Jerome 94 – 5)

Ми всі – тільки жалюгідні  раби свого шлунка. Не поривайтесь  до моральності й справедливості, друзі мої; стежте пильно за своїм  шлунком і годуйте його дбайливо й розважно. Тоді доброчесність і задоволення прийдуть і запанують у вашому серці самі собою, без ніяких зусиль з вашого боку, й ви будете добрим громадянином і дбайливим, ніжним батьком родини – благородною, богобоязливою людиною. (Лісняк, 125)

The poetic and philosophical tone of this extract is established by the use of descriptive adjectives (‘sorriest’, ‘loving’, ‘noble’ etc.), adverbs (‘vigilantly’) and words concerning morality such as ‘righteousness’ and ‘virtue’. These features are supplemented with a metaphor (‘slaves of our stomach’) and personification (‘virtue and contentment will come and reign’). In my opinion, the three translators are successful in transporting the form into the target language as they use appropriate adjectives, preserve the metaphor and personification and their language contains about the same loftiness as the original:

As Zemanová observes in her thesis, Jerome employs another device to create irony – he uses italics to stress words and their contribution to irony (24). The use of italics occurs, for example, in the sentence concerning Harris’s singing a comic song:

 You have never heard Harris sing a comic song, or you would understand the service I had rendered to mankind. It is one of Harris’s fixed ideas that he can sing a comic song; the fixed idea, on the contrary, among those of Harris’s friends who have heard him try, is that he can’t, and never will be able to, and that he ought not to be allowed to try. (Jerome 70)

Ви, мабуть, не чули, як Гаріс співає комічні  куплети, а то б зрозуміли, яку  велику послугу зробив я людству. Гаріс, бачте, втовкмачив собі в голову, ніби він уміє співати комічні  куплети, тоді як усі його знайомі, що чули, як він пробує їх співати, твердо переконані,що він цього не вміє, і ніколи не вмітиме, і йому не слід дозволяти навіть пробувати. (Лісняк, 95)

The translator place the verb ‘вміє’ at the beginning of the phrase, although it would gain more stress in the final position. However, their solutions of keeping the italics are probably based on their assumptions that words in italics stand out from the text and monopolise the reader’s attention more than non-italicised words in the final position. In this type of text the solutions are justifiable and can be considered successful.

In conclusion of this chapter on irony, I would like to comment on the general way the three Ukrainian translators render irony in Three Men in the Boat. I will attempt to demonstrate it on one example, the comments are, however, based on the overall study of irony in the novel. The extract is related to J.’s judging Harris’s taste in clothing:

It is a great pity, because he will never be a success as it is, while there are one or two colours in which he might not really look so bad, with his hat on. (Jerome 61)

А шкода, бо він  зі своїм смаком ніколи не матиме успіху, тоді як є все ж таки кольори, в  яких він здавався б непоганим  із себе, - принаймні поки не скине  капелюха.(Лісняк, 83)

Y.Lisnyak seems to stick to the original and does not play with the language very much. The ironic tone is preserved but it is not so marked, on the other hand, tends to enhance Jerome’s irony by using more expressive and colloquial words and phrases.

 

CHAPTER III. Metaphor

3.1 Metaphor in Three Men in a Boat

 

Metaphorical language is an integral part of any literary text and is one of the most admired features in literature. Metaphor represents one of the figures of speech and it “occurs when a word or phrase in a passage is clearly out of place in the topic being dealt with but nevertheless makes sense because of some similarity between it and what is being talked about” (Montgomery 129). To be able to interpret metaphor, the reader has to recognise the similarity between the two concepts and carry it over to the new context. Metaphor can reinforce the reader’s imagination and conceptions of the world, as well as influence his or her attitude to the topic that is discussed (Montgomery 134). In other words, metaphor is “a process of referring figuratively and emotively to an object in terms of another” (Menacere 568), and serves to stimulate an image, to provoke an interesting comparison or to provide original ways of perceiving the world (Alvarez 480).

When studying (or translating) metaphors it is useful to be able to analyse them. In 1936, I. A. Richards proposed and named three aspects of metaphor (96 and 117):

Tenor – the original idea; what is really being said or thought of, Vehicle – the borrowed idea; what the original idea is compared to, Ground – the common characteristics. Thus, in Jerome’s metaphor “Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature” (Jerome 184), sunlight is the tenor, life-blood the vehicle, and the shared element (or ground) probably life or energy.

 Peter Newmark understands metaphors as devices used to “describe an entity, event or quality more comprehensively and concisely and in a more complex way than is possible by using literal language” (Approaches 84) and divides them into five types (84 – 94):

Dead metaphors are fossilized metaphors (e. g. ‘arm of the chair’); many of them have been imported from other languages (e. g. ‘think’ from Old English); Cliché metaphors usually consist of stereotyped collocations (‘leave no stone unturned’); Stock metaphors are standard or common metaphors; they may be one word metaphors (‘a ray of hope’) or extended metaphors, i.e. idioms (‘cast a shadow over’)

 Recent metaphors often include neologisms such as ‘head-hunters’; Original (creative) metaphors are invented by an author and are often dramatic and shocking in effect (e.g. ‘the sun flung spangles, dancing coins’).

As this division is quite complex and analysing the metaphors in Three men in a Boat in this way would require a thorough (sometimes even etymological) study, I will confine my focus to the most frequent types of metaphor in the novel – the stock metaphors, especially idioms, and original metaphors. These types of metaphor are also worth of studying from the translation point of view – it is interesting to observe what Ukrainian equivalents of the English idioms are used and how the translators maintain the creativity of the original metaphors.

 One of the subtypes of metaphor that is widely employed in Jerome’s book is that of simile. Like metaphor, simile also draws attention to the similarity between two things or phenomena but whereas in metaphor the comparison is implied, in simile the comparison is explicitly expressed with the help of words such as ‘like’ or ‘as’ (Montgomery 129). Jerome makes use of similes in his humorous or ironic remarks about somebody or something, as in

The man they had got now was a jolly, light-hearted, thick-headed sort of chap with about as much sensitiveness in him as there might be in a Newfoundland puppy (Jerome 63);

as well as in his poetic parts of the novel:

It was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper green; and the year seems like a fair young maid, trembling with strange, wakening pulses on the brink of womanhood. (Jerome 49)

 Personification (anthropomorphic metaphor), another category of metaphor, is abundant in Three Men in a Boat as well. Personification appears when human traits (qualities, feelings etc.) are attributed to non-living things, animals, phenomena, and so on. Jerome again applies personification both in the humorous situations and in the poetic descriptions. In the former he personifies food, toothbrushes, tow-lines, boats, tea-kettles, towns and the like, to make fun of the things and especially of people who are affected by the things’ mean ‘behaviour’:

That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. . . . You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out . . . (Jerome 93)

In the latter Jerome uses personification as a poetic device to make the poetic descriptions more vivid and imagination-provoking:

. . . with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o’er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, . . . (Jerome 184)

Even though metaphor is a feature predominantly present in and typical of poetry, it occurs very frequently in any literary text and can contribute to its humorous tone. It is the non-literal meaning or the comparison included in metaphor that, when used inappropriately or awkwardly, creates incongruity and thus humorous effect (Ross 35):

We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. (Jerome 94)

In this example, the comparison of humans to slaves who have to constantly serve their stomachs produces a comic effect, as the statement is obviously exaggerated and contains poor justification for people’s indulgence in eating.

3.2 Translation of Metaphor

 The problem of translation of metaphor has not been sufficiently researched yet and individual translators and literary critics hold different attitudes to approaching it. Some think that metaphor should be rendered literally, some claim that this would result in a meaningless expression in the target text (Menacere 568). Culturally based metaphors, i.e. metaphors in which the two images compared are perceived differently by the source and target cultures, will be naturally more difficult to translate than those in which the images have the same cognitive content in both cultures. This fact is also related to the use of symbols. Some symbols have universal applications and are perceived equally in the cultures and thus are easily translatable. On the other hand, symbols that convey different meanings in different cultures require complete transformation of metaphor otherwise the translation would be senseless (Menacere 569 – 70).

Since English and Ukrainian cultures are, in terms of understanding symbols and perceiving images, relatively close, the translation of metaphors in Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat did not involve any substantial changes. For example, as the concept of ‘sword’ is understood as a symbol of power (or power gained by violence) both in English and Ukrainian, the Ukrainian translators do not have to transform the metaphor in any way:

. . . for the sword is judge and jury, plaintiff and executioner, in these tempestuous times . . . (Jerome 107)

1. Translating a metaphor using the same or a similar image;

2. Translating it with a different image that has the same sense;

3. Converting the metaphor into a simile;

4. Translation of metaphor by simile plus sense;

5. Conversion of metaphor into sense.

As has been already mentioned, English and Ukrainian cultures are not so remote to cause problems in translating metaphors or to force translators to recreate them. Therefore, the first method was used by the translators of the Jerome’s novel in the majority of cases. The use of this mode is possible if the image has comparable frequency and validity in the target language (Alvarez 484), as in this example:

Had it been a Richard there! the cup of liberty might have been dashed from England’s lips, and the taste of freedom held back for a hundred years. (Jerome 110)

Якби не Ричард, келих свободи, може, ще було б відірвано  від уст Англії і вона ще сотню  років не спізнала б смаку волі. (Лісняк, 143-144).

The translator choose translation “келих» for the word ‘cup’, it still preserves the sense of the metaphor and the cup’s relation to the lips of personified England. Since the metaphor of ‘the cup of . . .’ is widely used in Ukrainian as well, the translations are perfectly understandable for Ukrainian readers.

 

It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather; in wet, the task becomes herculean. (Jerome 19)

Напнути намет  і в гарну погоду нелегко, а  в дощ – це робота для Геркулеса. (Лісняк, 30)

Lisnyak retain the image of Hercules in his translation. The image refers to the tremendous effort required to accomplish the task.

The modes of transferring the metaphor by simile plus sense (Newmark mentions this example: ‘he is a lion’ developed into ‘he is as brave as a lion’) and of converting the metaphor into sense were not registered in the novel.

 Until now I have been dealing with the translation of original metaphors or metaphors that are invented by an author and that are not hackneyed and stereotyped. In the following paragraphs I will focus on the translation of idioms – expressions that Newmark counts into stock metaphors.

 Idioms are expressions or phrases that have fixed meanings. They can sometimes present translation problems because “they contain more than one word but form a single unit of meaning” (Menacere 570). Thus, if the words are interpreted individually, then the whole cluster of those words does not make sense. Another obstacle in translation of idioms can arise when an idiom is culturally specific and when translated literally, the target readership does not understand. According to Menacere, a reasonable approach to translating idioms is to understand the idiom, interpret its meaning (emotive and aesthetic) and transfer the meaning in the target language (571). The Ukrainian translator render the idioms in two ways, both equally successful. First, they use Ukrainian idiomatic equivalents where there are any or when the context makes it possible.

Secondly, if there is no idiomatic equivalent in Ukrainian or when the idiom does not fit the context, they translate them with unidiomatic expressions with the same sense as that of the original idioms.

Peter Newmark claims that similes “are the poor cousins of metaphors” as they “have none of the power and the incisiveness of metaphors” (Paragraphs 19). However, Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat abounds with them, their main function being to describe and illustrate the events and incidents in both the humorous and poetic parts of the novel. They normally do not cause any problems in translating and are predominantly translated literally, as the translator does not have any reason to change or recreate them (Newmark, Paragraphs 19). This is the case in most instances of similes in Jerome’s novel.