29
CONNOTATIONS AND DENOTATIONS
Bear in mind that whilst all texts have connotations, an aura of ideas
and feeling suggested by lexical words (crudely, “run” may suggest
“haste”, “sofa” may suggest “comfort”), and all texts have an “underlife”
(viz. as much of the personal qualities and the private life of the writer as
can be derived from an intuitive/analytical reading of a text), in a non-
literary text the denotations of a word normally come before its
connotations. But in a literary text, you have to give precedence to its
connotations, since, if it is any good, it is an allegory, a comment of
society, at the time and now, as well as on its strict setting.
From a translator’s point of view this is the only theoretical distinction
between a non-literary and a literary text. In fact, the greater the quantity
of a language’s resources (e.g. polysemy, word-play, sound-effect,
metre, rhyme) expended on a text, the more difficult it is likely to be to
translate, and the more worthwhile. A satisfactory restricted translation
of any poem is always possible, though it may work as an introduction to
and an interpretation of rather than as a recreation of the original.
Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn: