Diachronic plurality in translation of Shakespeare’s plays: a cognitive-discursive perspective

Abstract

This paper focuses on the efficiency of cognitive-discursive approach to the study of diachronic plurality in translation on the material of Shakespeare’s plays as time-remote original texts and their chronologically distant Ukrainian retranslations of the 19th-21st centuries. Complex research methodology based on the methods of cognitive translation studies together with methodological principles of discourse analysis is implemented to reveal the influence of discursive and cognitive factors on the process and result of retranslation. Discourse analysis substantiates the discursive factor that becomes a prerequisite of diachronic plurality in translation of Shakespeare’s plays in cases when chronological and ideological, cultural and individual frameworks of the original and translated texts are different. Methods of cognitive translation studies prove the cognitive factor to become the determinant of the diachronic plurality in translation of Shakespeare’s plays because cognitive consonance or cognitive dissonance of the translators with the author’s ideas cause different interpretations of the original texts by the translators and—consequently—different degrees of cognitive proximity of the translated text with the original one. The correlation of cognitive consonance and cognitive dissonance with the degrees of cognitive proximity appears to be the following: cognitive consonance correlates with cognitive equivalents (full and partial) or cognitive analogues (functional and stylistic); cognitive dissonance correlates with cognitive variants (referential, valorative, and notional). Methodology of cognitive translation studies helps determine the translator’s choice of effective translation strategies (achaization, modernization, and neutralization of temporal distance) and tactics (reproductive or adaptive) while translating a time-remote original work.