Academic literature on the topic 'Pelevin, Viktor – Homo Zapiens'

Babylen Tatarsky, the protagonist in Russian writer Viktor Pelevin's novel Generation “P” (translated into English by Andrew Bromfield as Homo Zapiens), works to adapt American advertisements for the Russian market and witnesses how the reality of Russia’s tumultuous 1990s is replaced by a consumer-driven television simulation. Puns in the advertising slogans that Tatarsky translates, interspersed throughout Generation “P”, are central to its plot. Some of these puns exhibit greater sophistication than others: in addition to utilizing homonymy, homophony, homography, paronymy, and polysemy, they involve transmesis, multilingualism, and intertextuality. This article compares how Pelevin’s translators (English, German, Polish, Spanish, and French) approached these difficult puns. The objective of this comparative analysis is to demonstrate how the intertext(s) evoked through wordplay may, on the one hand, impede translation, but, on the other, open avenues for creative solutions, by producing new traces and echoes of meaning that make the act of translation possible. The issues raised by the various translations point to a need to re-examine the roles and tasks of the translator and underscore the importance of keeping the (un)translatability debate open. Ultimately, this article aims to contribute to the ongoing reconceptualization of what literary translation is and, especially, what it does: with texts, readers, literatures, and, above all, with language.

In traditional Russian literature, the motif of losing oneself regularly serves as the motivation for spiritual transformation and search for salvation of the character, promoting the plot of a literary text and creating new types of characters. However, it is not difficult to notice the transformation in the utilization and implementation of this motif in the plot composition of postmodern texts based on the principle of uncertainty and randomness, which is opposed to the teleology of the classical narrative. The relevance of the topic is due to the insufficiency of research on such changes, especially in the postmodern works by Viktor Pelevin. Though there have been several observations on Pelevin’s textual structure, the role of motifs in organizing and constructing the plot remains outside the scope of researchers’ attention. This article aims to reveal the role and specifics of the motif “the loss of oneself” as a plot-forming component in the novel Generation “P” by V. O. Pelevin. Based on the contemporary motif theory, it particularly pays attention to the context of allomotifs and events associated with the motifeme of losing oneself, following A. Dundes, who understands the motifeme as the basic unit in the paradigmatics of the narrative, and allomotifs as its syntagmatic variants. Through analyzing various variations of allomotifs “the loss of oneself” (losing the feeling of eternity, symbolic death, metamorphosis, manipulation, etc.), the paper attempts to reveal constructive components of the narrative structure in this novel, which determined its artistic semantics. Arguing the tragic essence of the individual value orientation on consumerism in the context of the eschatological media mythology, it also finds out that Pelevin constructs the plot as Tatarsky’s rising up the career ladder, accompanied by the loss of personality, the replacement of Homo sapiens by Homo Zappiens. To achieve this purpose, he widely uses different schemes that implement the emic motifeme through various variations of allomotifs. That’s why, the success of the protagonist in the ending does not mean the spiritual salvation, but the totality of submission to the God of money and immersion in the void, where the way out of the new social and mental impasse is impossible not only for the protagonist but also for the novelist himself. Keywords: Victor Pelevin, Generation “P”， motifeme of losing oneself, set of allomotifs, mythopoetics

In the process of communication, we do not exchange words, but meanings. On the one hand, meaning, as a communicative category, is not limited to a single language and can be conveyed in translation by various linguistic means. On the other hand, when it comes to translation meaning losses are still unavoidable because most words of any natural language are bound to the culture behind them. The aim of this article is to analyze the ways to compensate in translation the communicative and pragmatic effect of culture-bound elements of literary text, termed within the scope of Russian translation studies as ‘associative realities’. The research is based on the novel Homo Zapiens (Penguin Books Ph, 2002) / Babylon (Faber Ph, 2001) by V. Pelevin and its translation into English, performed by A. Bromfield. The focus of the study is to analyze the functioning of English-language loanwords in the novel, which lose their nominative value and obtain a certain symbolic meaning. Serving as specific signal words emphasizing the changes in the society when the Russian people in the 1990’s found themselves disoriented and trapped between a discredited Soviet past and a banal, Westernized future, they acquire the features of culture bound elements typical for the Russian culture rather than for their source culture. The research identifies several strategies to compensate the communicative and pragmatic effects of multilingual puns in translation. The study allows us to expand our understanding of the functions of foreign loanwords in the text of a work of fiction, as well as to identify the main principles and ways of transmitting the bilingual nature of the text in translation.

Введение. Идиостиль – это система фактических и формальных характеристик, присущих произведениям конкретного автора и подлежащих обязательному воспроизведению в иноязычном переводе. Запоминающийся и узнаваемый идиостиль В. О. Пелевина является одной из причин всемирного успеха его романа «Generation „П“», переведенного на большинство европейских языков. Актуальность исследования определяется необходимостью сохранения в переводе индивидуального авторского стиля как принципиальной характеристики художественного текста.Цель исследования – выявление способов воспроизведения индивидуального стиля В. О. Пелевина при переводе романа «Generation „П“» с русского языка на английский. Материал и методы. Материалами исследования послужили оригинальный текст романа В. Пелевина «Generation „П“» и его перевод на английский язык, выполненный Э. Бромфилдом. В качестве методов использовались общенаучные методы анализа, синтеза и обобщения, а также частнонаучный метод описания.Результаты и обсуждение. Бестселлер В. Пелевина «Generation „П“» существует в рамках парадигмы пост­модернизма, для которого характерны интертекстуальность, цитатность, многоуровневость текстовой организации, стилевой синкретизм, а также целый ряд других аспектов. Однако даже на фоне разнородных общежанровых характеристик роман привлекает внимание особой эклектичностью, потенциальной неоднозначностью восприятия, игрой слов, обилием цитат и аллюзий. Перечисленные аспекты определяют специфику идиостиля В. Пелевина, характеризующегося конвергенцией выразительных средств и стилистических приемов, обилие и разноплановость которых представляют серьезную задачу для переводчика. С целью анализа передачи наиболее значимых компонентов идиостиля В. Пелевина рассмотрены репрезентативные фрагменты текста, в которых специфика авторского почерка реализуется особенно наглядно.Заключение. Обнаруженные погрешности передачи некоторых компонентов идиостиля В. Пелевина Э. Бромфилдом, возможно, связаны с неполнотой понимания многоаспектности оригинального текста, нагруженного лингвистическими средствами, приемами художественной выразительности и культурными отсылками, характеризующими авторский почерк В. Пелевина, в рамках парадигмы русского постмодернизма. Наиболее заметным упущением для передачи авторского идиостиля можно считать решение о нулевом переводе англоязычных фрагментов текста, а также нейтрализацию просторечного статуса целого ряда идиом, что отчасти затушевывает полную картину стилистического ландшафта романа. Introduction. Relevance of the research is determined by the interest of modern linguistics and translation science in search of effective ways of preserving author’s individual style in translation. Aim and objectives. The present paper attempts to discuss A. Bromfield’s ways and decisions to render the principal features of V. O. Pelevin’s individual style in “Generation P” postmodernist novel. Materials and methods. The research is based on two text sources: the Russian original text of “Generation “P”” by V. Pelevin and its English version “Homo Zapiens” (transl. A. Bromfield). The methods applied are general scientific (observation and description) and linguistic (text analysis, comparative analysis).Results and discussion. Rendering of author’s idiostyle features is one of the basic tasks of literary translation. Novel “Generation “P”” by V. Pelevin’s, marked by intertextuality and syncretism of style and narration characteristic of Russian postmodernist paradigm, strikes the reader with own specific eclecticism, word play, multi-layered picture of reality, plentiful quotations and allusiveness. The challenging attempt of Russian-English literary translation by British interpreter A. Bromfield, trying to restore V. Pelevin’s idiostyle principal features manifested in plexus of expressive means and stylistic devices, is discussed in the article. Conclusion. In authors’ view, some minor flaws in rendering of V. Pelevin’s idiostyle may be caused by incompleteness of comprehension of “Generation “P”” text, loaded by multifaceted linguistic affluence of style. The most sensitive omission for the author’s idiostyle is probably zero translation of English insertions as principal features of Pelevin’s bilingual narration, as well as the decision to neutralize some colloquialism.