ON THE BOUNDARY OF AUTHENTICITY AND ARTISTICITY: THE LINGUOSTYLISTIC NATURE OF TRANSLATION OF AUTOFICTIONAL LITERATURE

Ursul K.V.¹, Kuzmenko E.K.²

Ursul K.V.

Russian State University for the Humanities
125047, Miusskaya square, building 6
Moscow, Russia
e-mail: ursul-16@mail.ru

Kuzmenko E.K.

Russian State University for the Humanities
125047, Miusskaya square, building 6
Moscow, Russia
e-mail: egorkuz02@gmail.com

Introduction

Over the past few years, a new trend has emerged in Russian literature: an unusual sincerity. This includes attempts to relive and understand personal traumatic experiences, complex relationships with anyone—be it mother, father, distant relatives, spouse, or friends—as well as a semblance of documentary accuracy and direct communication with the reader.

In the modern world, the picture of the global polarization of space into «ours» and «theirs» is becoming increasingly obvious [4, p. 50], when in the struggle for dominance, authoritarian means of influencing the individual are sometimes not neglected [Ibid.].

In this situation, the most popular genre was «autofiction».

Autofiction, although a new term not yet fully established in Russian literary studies, which some critics [8] consider a genre in which "the author uses elements of their own life, experience, and personality to create a fictional work," has already gained significant popularity. This is evidenced by literary courses for aspiring authors and specialized publishing houses working in this field.

Autofiction is most often approached in an effort to recount traumatic experiences with utmost sincerity. Such works are typically first-person narratives, recounting events directly experienced by the author; the protagonist bears the author's name, background, and appearance, and in some cases, the line between creator and character is virtually blurred. Among the most notable examples of Russian autofiction are Oksana Vasyakina's trilogy and Masha Konstantinidi's novel "Bald.".

Against the backdrop of the growing popularity of autofiction in Russian literature, a number of questions arise regarding the adequate translation of such prose into foreign languages: how close should a translator remain to the author's writing style; is it possible to preserve the author's "I" when translating texts in which it is one of the key elements shaping the text; is it possible to convey to the reader at least a relative understanding of the author's experience.

Like any genre, autofiction has a number of distinctive features. Researchers and critics identify several characteristics [6]:

• first-person narration;

• coincidence of the name and biographical details of the hero and the author;

• mixing of fact and fiction;

• lack of a mandatory plot or linear narrative;

• shifting the emphasis from the plot of events to the feelings, thoughts of the narrator and their reflection on personal experience;

• focus on the author’s everyday existence without attempts to embellish or glorify his own life;

• the admissibility of genre synthesis of prose and poetry, «stream of consciousness» and fragmentary narration;

• inclusion of real people among the characters, combining several heroes into one and endowing them with fictional traits.

Such genre features create specific difficulties for the translator, who must convey not only the meaning but also the emotional authenticity of the text, correctly translate all realities, and avoid errors at the phonetic and graphic levels.

This article focuses on a linguastylistic analysis of key textual levels in Oksana Vasyakina's novel "The Wound," one of the most important works in the history of Russian autofiction. This work combines a candid account of trauma, essays, poetry, and elements of magical realism, making it both engaging and challenging to translate. To provide commentary on my translation, I selected the most problematic and significant passages related to graphics, phonetics, grammar, and syntax. Furthermore, the difficulties of conveying realia and stylistic devices, as well as the author's idiostyle, are analyzed.

Creating an effect of verbality and sincerity using graphics and phonics of text

The first aspect of the analysis concerns phonics and graphics in the novel "The Wound." To begin, it is necessary to provide a definition of the concept of "graphics" as it applies to text. According to the Linguistic Encyclopedic Dictionary [7], graphics is understood as "the totality of all means of a given writing system" of a language; the main graphic means include graphemes/letters, punctuation marks, paragraph division, stress marks, spaces, uppercase and lowercase letters, abbreviations, and, in printed texts, font highlighting.

Graphic design plays a significant role in the story being analyzed. One of the techniques used is the italicization of certain words and parts. With the exception of the epigraphs, the entire text of "The Wound" uses a uniform font, without italics or boldface. However, in the final, fifth chapter, the author does resort to italics: "I will say in my own language:«I love you, mom. It was impossible to say in your language. But my language is different, it's neither more difficult nor simpler. It's neither better nor worse. In it you can say: "Mom, I love you"» [2, p. 275]. — “I will say in my own language: I love you, mum. It was impossible to say it in your language. But my language is different, it's not more or less complicated. It's neither better or worse. It is possible to say “Mum, I love you” in it” [here and further translation from Russian by the co-author of the article: E.K. Kuzmenko].

In the final section of the novel, Oksana Vasyakina reflects on her relationship with her mother—an attempt to make peace with her. She notes that throughout the novel, she addressed her mother in various ways, but not as "you," which is the pronoun italicized in the final section. The phrases "Mom, I love you" and "I love you, Mom" are similarly emphasized. In this case, the italicization serves not only as a logical emphasis but also as an emphatic device, highlighting the key idea of the chapter and expressing the emotional journey toward accepting her mother and her role. Therefore, preserving this graphic style during the translation seemed important.

The graphic component of the text also includes the division of the text into paragraphs, chapters, and subchapters. The author divides her text into five chapters, each of which is a continuous narrative with traditional paragraph divisions. Only in rare cases does she divide chapters into subchapters using the graphic symbol "*" or a single-line space.

This writing style is another genre characteristic aimed at creating a stream-of-consciousness effect. Given this characteristic, the goal at this level of the text was to convey the graphic structure as accurately as possible.

As for phonics, the main difficulty in the work "Wound" is the author's active inclusion of poems and verses, both his own and those of other poets, into the fabric of prose: in particular, two poems by Gennady Aigi are quoted.

In the first case, the translator faces a challenging task: not only to reproduce the rhythm of the original, but also to recreate its poetic form. For example, in the poem of her own composition woven into the story, Oksana Vasyakina eschews any punctuation and utilizes several different metrical patterns. When translating someone else's poetry, it is necessary to find a worthy equivalent that most adequately conveys the rhythm of the original.

Features of recreating the reality of the world in a literary text at the lexical level

Significant difficulties during translation arose at the lexical level, since the work «Wound», written in the genre of «autofiction», is replete with various realities.

According to A.V. Zasetskaya, realia refers to any objects of material culture, historical facts, concepts, and ideas that reflect the cultural code of a nation [3, p. 39]. Realia are used to emphasize the authenticity of not only events, but also the world in which the author-heroine exists.

Among the realities of the text there are many toponyms: «Angara», «Baikal», «Listvyanka», «Moscow», «Novosibirsk» [2, pp. 229–275] and others. Among the proper names there are names «Lyubov Mikhailovna», «Olesya», «Leo», «Anna Barkova», «Valentin Rasputin» [2, pp. 229–275]. To adequately translate them into English, the transliteration technique was used: “Angara”, “Baikal”, “Listvyanka”, “Moscow”, “Novosibirsk”; “Lyubov Mikhailovna”, “Olesya”, “Leo”, “Anna Barkova”, “Valentin Rasputin”.

Another difficulty related to the realities was the abundant use of historicisms. For example, the text contains references to Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR («"In 1937, he was charged under Article 58 and immediately executed."» [2, p. 232]); May 9 Parade («Her birthday was on May 9th, and every time after the holiday we would go watch the parade and walk along Mira Avenue.» [2, p. 234]) and Khrushchev-era buildings (Then they built Khrushchev-era buildings and multi-story dormitories.)« [2, p. 245]). For a Russian-speaking reader, these realities are clear and do not require explanation, but an English-speaking audience, for example, an American one, is not immersed in this historical context, so the options “Article 58”, “Her birthday was on the ninth of May...” и “Khrushchev Building” require clarification. Therefore, it was decided to add footnotes with the translator's comments:

They arrested him and shot him in 1937 under the false charge of Article 58. (Text of the interlinear translation commentary: Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put into force on February 25, 1927, to prosecute those suspected of counterrevolutionary activities.)

She had her birthday on the ninth of May, and every time afterward we went to watch the military parade and walk along Mir Avenue. (Interlinear translation text: Russian national holiday in honor of the victory of the Red Army and the Soviet people over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War.)

Then Khrushevka and multi-storey dormitories were built. (Underlined translation text: Standard sectional (less often corridor, corridor-sectional) large-panel, frame and frame-panel, brick, large-block (less often brick-block, volumetric-block) multi-apartment residential buildings, a series of which were developed in the USSR from 1955 to 1963.).

Oksana Vasyakina also actively uses words with connotations that have no equivalent in English: for example, «"string bag", "fishing chair-folding bed", "brewed moonshine"», as well as specific vocabulary related to fortune telling: «"put a face on"» и «fortune telling on beans» [2, p. 17–223]. In this case, an analogical translation was applied using the most appropriate dictionary equivalents: string bag, fishing stool, to distill moonshine, to charm away erysipelas, fortune-telling with beans.

I also had to resort to dictionary versions due to another lexical difficulty—the specialized terminology used by the author. The text includes words such as exacerbation (diseases), police pursuit, persecution mania, Khrushchev-era building [2, p. 18–245]. To translate them correctly into English, we consulted Oxford's Learning and Cambridge Dictionaries, as well as the Reverso contextual dictionary, where we found the following matches in the target language: exacerbation, pursuit by the police, prosecutory mania, Khrushchevka.

Another way to create the "orality" and "reality" of the narrative at the lexical level is the use of colloquial words. For example, the author uses «great-grandmother» instead of "great-grandmother"«, "great-grandfather"« instead of "great-grandfather", «"aunt"» instead of "aunt", and also «"crap", "iPhone"» (instead of "iPhone"), «"scribbled"» and obscene vocabulary [2, pp. 18–276]. The importance of conveying such vocabulary is determined by the need to adhere to one of the key rules of autofiction—realism. Therefore, it was decided to preserve such words as much as possible: in English, there are no direct equivalents for «great-grandmother,» «great-grandfather,» or «aunt,» so the closest variants were chosen. great-grandma, great-grandpa, aunt, and for "scribbled" - scribbling. For example:

She sat in a colorful dressing gown in an armchair in front of the television, knitting, scribbling with a ballpoint pen on the TV guide and making noisy, rolling burps [2, p. 234]. — She sat in a colorful dressing gown in an armchair in front of the TV, knitting, scribbling with a ballpoint pen on the TV guide and making noise, rolling burps.

My great-grandmother was really evil, she despised my mother and disliked her eldest daughter, my grandmother Valentina [2, p. 230-231]. — My great-grandma was downright evil, she despised my mother, and did not like her eldest daughter, my grandma Valentina.

A small concrete house, it was covered in graffiti, it smelled of shit, someone was using it as a toilet [2, p. 240]. — A small concrete house, it was covered with graffiti, it smelled of shit, someone was using it as a toilet.

This is not the bright, glaring, cold beam of an iPhone [2, p. 229]. — This is not the bright, eye-catching, cold light of an iPhone.

An important theme in Oksana Vasyakina's book is the role of women in society, literature, and writing. Therefore, she not only includes essays and poems on gender in the narrative, but also actively uses feminitives (both established and those not yet included in dictionaries). According to E.P. Butorina, feminitives are the names of women's professions with marked formal indicators [1, p. 2601]. However, if in Russian some feminitives (waitress, actress) are established, and others, formed with the suffix "-k", although controversial, are gradually coming into use, then in English, where there is no grammatical category of gender, conveying the feminist message important to the author becomes a difficult task (despite the existence of the suffixes -ess [10] and -ette [11], now used extremely rarely). For example, the neutral word «"girlfriend"» can be translated as “friend” or “girlfriend” (in the first case, the indication of the female gender is lost, in the second, a romantic subtext arises), and words such as «"therapist", "writer", "cashier"», it is not at all possible to convey this with a similar reference to the feminine gender.

Conveying the lexical and syntactic features of Oksana Vasyakina's idiostyle

In analyzing the story and its translation, we also noted the difficulties that arise in conveying grammatical and syntactic constructions, as well as a number of stylistic figures.

One of the main difficulties at the lexical and grammatical level was the correct rendering of personal pronouns. In Russian, inanimate objects and phenomena can be designated by gender pronouns, whereas in English, they are usually referred to by the neuter gender. For example, the author describes his illness as follows: «"And the illness returned. It returned in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk..."», which when translated looks like this: “And the disease returned. It returned in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk...” [2, p. 240].

A key feature of Oksana Vasyakina's autofiction is magical realism (according to M.A. Sadinova [5], magical realism encompasses works that blur the line between the real and the mythological); it is created not only through mystical imagery but also through personification (the endowment of inanimate objects with the properties of animate ones). The latter created difficulties in conveying gender through pronouns. For example, the author writes about the Angara and Yenisei rivers: «"Everyone knows where Angara came from. Angara was the only and beloved daughter of Old Baikal. Then she fell in love with Yenisei and ran away from her father to him."» [2, p. 226]. In all such cases, it was decided to render the Russian pronouns with "he" and "she," as the writer strives to animate natural phenomena by imbuing them with human traits. Another example is an image that appears to the heroine during periods of illness: a creature watching her through the ventilation; Oksana Vasyakina refers to it as "he." Based on the context and an earlier mention of a peeping stepfather, we decided to use the pronoun "he" in the translation: "But sometimes, while doing my homework at the table, I heard a quiet rustling behind the door and, turning around, discovered that my mother's lover was spying on me. I saw his shining eye in a small hole, and it seemed to me that the eye was laughing at me. He was dangerous. <…> I was sure that someone out there in the darkness was watching me. He was evil and wanted to hurt me» [2, p. 238]. – “But sometimes, while doing my homework at the table, I heard a soft rustling outside the door and, turning around, discovered that my mother’s lover was spying on me. I saw his shiny eye in a small hole, and it seemed to me that the eye was laughing at me. He was dangerous. <…> I was sure that someone was there, in the dark, watching me. He is angry and wants to hurt me.”

Speaking of syntactic complexities, we'd like to highlight the techniques of omission and addition. For example, to make the English text clearer, we decided to omit the conjunction "that" in some passages: «"I feel like there's one more place missing from my story..."» [2, p. 230] turned into “I think there is one link missing from my story...”.

Regarding the acceptance of the addition, the proposal «"They don't say a smell is big, but I will write that it is a big smell."» [2, p. 230] was transformed as follows: “Normally they don't describe the smell as broad but this is exactly how I will describe it”. “Normal” and «they» were added to demonstrate the difference between the heroine and the rest of the world.

The addition technique also helps clarify the context for the English-speaking reader. For example, in the translation of the sentence "In 1937, he was accused under Article 58 and immediately executed" [2, p. 232], we decided to add the phrase“under the false charge”, (which adds drama to the letter and reproduces the historical context of the repressions of the 1930s.) — They arrested him and shot in 1937 under the false charge of Article 58.

The transfer of stylistic figures from Russian into English in the novel "The Wound"«

Oksana Vasyakina's narrative language is full of various stylistic devices. One such device is anaphora: «"Why, I wonder, in dreams that can offer fantastical metaphors of farewell and forgiveness, do I feel a government hand handing me a bill from an institution? Why, every time I lose my mother in a dream, am I preoccupied with how I'll bury her? Why, every time, do I care about her dead body, but feel nothing like a person should feel after losing a mother? Why am I simply preoccupied with the funeral and the money? Why can't I see her face and look into her eyes?"» [2, p. 247]. Oksana Vasyakina uses this technique in prose to bring the story closer to poetry, so the goal was to preserve this technique in the English version: “"Why, every time I lose my mother in a dream, do I worry about how I'll bury her? Why do I care for her dead body every time, but feel nothing like someone who's lost a mother should? Why am I simply preoccupied with funeral arrangements and money? Why can't I see her face or look into her eyes?".

Besides anaphora, one of Oksana Vasyakina's frequent techniques is comparison. This is how she describes the intergenerational trauma passed down in her family: «"Pain and anger rolled into the next generations, like the circles from a thrown pebble growing one from another."» [2, p. 233], and compares the cups of Grandma Valentina's bra to sails: «"I remember her huge, lacy, sail-like bra cups."» [2, p. 234]. Since this technique is important for the idiostyle, we decided to retain it: “Pain and anger rolled into the next generations, like circles from a thrown pebble growing from one another” и “I remember her huge lace bra cups, full-blown like sails”.

The principle of preserving the author's "I" when translating autofiction into English

As we've already written, autofiction has several distinctive genre characteristics. The most important of these is the effect of the reality of events, the so-called "utmost honesty," due to the genre's reliance on the authenticity of events and the personality of the author-protagonist; this sense of "realism" is created, in part, through the author's idiostyle.

In particular, Oksana Vasyakina, in her novel "The Wound," recreates the orality and simplicity of speech, giving the reader the feeling of engaging in a dialogue with a real person about something that actually happened. As we've already written, Oksana Vasyakina achieves this effect in several aspects of the text. She uses colloquial and vernacular vocabulary. ("grandma", "aunt", "shit"« [2, p. 18–275]), does not «embellish» the speech of the characters, who actively use obscene vocabulary; and also resorts to short, dry phrases that imitate oral speech ("Grandma died in 2016, in 2018 my mother's lover rotted alive in the hospital due to medical negligence, in 2019 my mother died"« [2, p. 242]). Moreover, Oksana Vasyakina's prose lacks stylistic unity: for example, she writes the word "iPhone" in Cyrillic ("айфон") [2, p. 241], in lowercase letters, while a few pages later she retains the English-language "Google Maps" and "Google" [2, p. 245]. Such carelessness is found in ordinary speech and writing, which can be attributed to yet another way of imitating reality.

When conveying these important elements of idiostyle, it was decided to preserve them as much as possible: to use the most similar equivalents in English (“grandma”, “aunt”, “shit”), leave obscene language (“said fuck you”, “fagots, whores”), preserve the author's effect of orality of speech (“My grandmother died in 2016, in 2018 my mother’s lover rotted alive in the hospital due to medical negligence, and in 2019 my mother died”), and also leave the author's spelling "mistake" in the writing «iPhone» in lowercase letters.

Oksana Vasyakina recreates the orality of speech through short, sometimes very simple, sentences. To preserve this characteristic, we decided to retain the author's textual divisions, using the technique of syntactic assimilation: «"A flashlight is a small device."» [2, p. 229] – “A flashlight is a small device.”.

The core element of Oksana Vasyakina's writing is first-person narration. This is another characteristic of autofiction and a way to convey the author's sincerity. This poses the challenge we mentioned earlier: how can the author's experience be accurately preserved and conveyed without distortion or the translator's personality being introduced into the text? This is precisely why we decided to adhere as closely to the author's style as possible, to avoid altering the author's "self" and "authorial experience," and, consequently, violating one of the fundamental rules of autofiction prose.

Authors of autofiction can afford to disrupt the reader's usual text structure: the absence of chapter divisions, transitions from one memory to another, and the use of stream-of-consciousness. Oksana Vasyakina is no exception. She divides chapters into subchapters only a few times throughout the text, adding poems, verses, and essays to the narrative, often breaking with conventional norms. Therefore, the overarching challenge became the adequate rendering of these significant elements into English, taking into account the peculiarities of the target language.

Conclusions

In conclusion, it's worth emphasizing that translating autofiction is not the easiest task for a translator. It's a largely creative process, requiring the translator to deeply and respectfully immerse themselves in the world of the author and their protagonist.

Oksana Vasyakina's story, with its emotional richness and genre intensity, clearly demonstrates the importance of maintaining a balance between authenticity and artistic invention.

Literature

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References

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