TRANSLATION INADEQUACIES IN ANTANAS BARANAUSKAS’ ANYKŠČIŲ ...

VILNIUS PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY

ELENA NAVICKAITĖ

TRANSLATION INADEQUACIES IN ANTANAS
BARANAUSKAS’

ANYKŠČIŲ ŠILELIS

MA Paper

Academic Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Janina Buitkienė

Vilnius, 2008

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………….2
INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………3

I. TRANSLATION AND DISCOURSE………………………………...5

1. Issues and Debates in Translation Studies………………….….5

1.1 The Problem of Equivalence……………………………………….….6
1.2 Formal Equivalence vs. Dynamic Equivalence……………………......8
1.3 The Problems of Linguistic Untranslatability……............................…9
1.4 The Problems of Cultural Untranslatability………………………….11
1.5 The Literal vs. Free Controversy………………………………….….13
1.6 Form vs. Content ……………………………………………….....…15
1.7 Problems of Poetry Translation…………………………….………...16
1.8 The Role of Translator ………………………………….………..….19

2. Translating Discourse…………………………………....……21

2.1. Cohesion and Coherence………………………………………….....23
2.2. Register& Dialect……………………………………………………24

II. TRANSLATION INADEQUACIES IN ANYKŠČIŲ ŠILELIS….…29
1. Additions…………………………………………………...…….29
2. Omissions…………………………………………………..…….35
3. Alterations………………………………………………………..49

CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………55
SUMMARY………………………………………………………………….......57
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………….......58
SOURCES………………………………………………………………………..61

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ABSTRACT
This paper introduced the debatable issues in translation, poetry translation
included. The purpose of the research was to compare two poetic discourses: the
original one and its translation, concentrating on the problems that arise in
structuring texts in the process of translation. A well – known poem Anykščių
šilelis by A. Baranauskas was chosen as a research object. The methods chosen
for the study were discourse analysis and content analysis. As we dealt with two
discourses (English and Lithuanian), certain aspects of contrastive analysis were
also applied. The research demonstrated that translation inadequacies mainly dealt
with text cohesion and manifested themselves most clearly in additions,
omissions and alterations of formal linguistic means. It also proved that the
above mentioned changes were caused by differences in languages’ grammatical
structure and lexical resources as well cultural differences and certain historical
influences.

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INTRODUCTION

This paper aims to compare two poetic discourses: the original and its
translation, concentrating on the problems that arise in the process of translation.
A well-known Lithuanian poem Anykščių šilelis by Antanas Baranauskas was
chosen as a research object not accidentally. First of all, this poetic work is highly
culture-bound and, therefore, could have caused a number of difficulties while
transferring it into the target language. Secondly, it is an instance of a poetic
discourse which, according to a number of linguists (Halliday& Hasan, 1976,
Hatim& Mason, 1990, Newmark, 1988 etc), causes problems and difficulties in
the process of translation. And thirdly, this poem belongs to an open-ended
register which can be characterized by a wide range of possible meanings to be
chosen both by the author and the translator as well as the scope of their
individuality and creativity. It should be also noted that the two languages, i.e.
English and Lithuanian, differ in a considerable number of ways: one is analytic,
the other – synthetic. Also, the literary discourse of the source language abounds
in different expressive means peculiar to the historical period being described.
These phenomena create certain problems in poetry translation.

Due to cultural and structural differences, certain variations at the surface
level of the translation, when compared to the original, are inevitable. We assume,
following Hatim& Mason (1990), that while translating the deep structure of the
original (text coherence) has to be preserved whereas certain variations at the
surface level (text cohesion) are unavoidable. Therefore, the main research
question addressed in the thesis was the identification of possible linguistic
variations at the surface level of the target language text.

Consequently, the purpose of the research is to reveal the main translation
inadequacies in the above mentioned poetic discourse and the ways they manifest
themselves. The purpose of the research presupposes the following objectives:

• To present the literature survey relevant to translation studies and
discourse analysis;

• To investigate additions, omissions and alterations at the surface level of
the target text;

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• To estimate the role of structural differences of the Lithuanian and
English languages, peculiarities of their lexical systems, differences in
cultural values and beliefs as well as historical background in the process
of translation.
To achieve the above mentioned objectives, the following research

methods were used: content analysis, discourse analysis: as we dealt with two
discourses, certain aspects of contrastive analysis were also applied.

As it was mentioned above, the scope of the research is a well – known
poem Anykščių šilelis by A. Baranauskas and its translation in English. The
present MA thesis consists of an abstract, introduction, theoretical and practical
parts, conclusions, summary in Lithuanian, and the list of references. The
introduction defines the field of the present study, indicates its purpose and
objectives, research questions and methods. The first part of the paper overviews
the most relevant to our research debatable topics in poetry translation, explains
the notions of formal and dynamic equivalence, discusses the problems of cultural
and linguistic untranslatability. The paper also raises the problem whether form or
content in more important in the process of translation and discusses the
controversy of the literal and free translation. The importance of the translator is
also discussed since he or she plays a significant role in the process of translation.

The second part reveals three major types of translation inadequacies
(additions, omissions and alterations) and provides a detailed analysis based on
the poem Anykščių šilelis and its translation. It also presents different reasons
these inadequacies occur at the surface level of the text.

The conclusions summarize the obtained results of the research, and the
references provide the list of publications that were chosen to reveal the issues of
translation and to analyze two poetic discourses – English and Lithuanian.

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I. TRANSLATION AND DISCOURSE
1. Issues and Debates in Translation Studies

The process of translation is a very complex phenomenon, and many
theorists interpret it from different perspectives. Translation is related to
bilingualism because a certain text is translated from one language to another.
Consequently, it presents numerous problems such as the translation of poetry and
difficulties related to the issue of untranslatability.

Before discussing the most important issues in translation I would like to
introduce some definitions of translation. Many theorists are arguing whether it is
an art or a science. Bell (1991: 4) states that the linguist inevitably approaches
translation from a ‘scientific’ point of view, seeking to create some kind of
‘objective’ description of the phenomenon. It could also be argued that translation
is an art and not amenable to objective, ‘scientific’ description and explanation.
The term ‘translation’ has been variously defined. Many linguists (Newmark,
1988, Hatim& Mason, 1990, Koller, 1979) agree that translation is the expression
in one language (or target language) of what has been expressed in another, source
language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences. Bell (1991: 13) proposes
three distinguishable meanings: (1) translating: the process; (2) a translation: the
product of the process translating; (3) translation: the abstract concept which
encompasses both the process of translating and the product of that process.

Linguists raise an important question: is translation a process or a product?
Hatim& Mason (1990: 3) give some evidence that translation can be a product.
They say that the target text displays only the translator’s final decisions, and
readers perceive an end-product, a result of a decision-making process; they do
not know the translator’s ideas or difficulties leading to the final decision. Many
critics of translation theory attempt to describe both the process and the product.
They also argue that the process begins in the mind of the translator. Bell (1991:
13) gives a definition in which “process” is distinguished from “result”:

The process or result of converting information from one language or
language of variety into another <…>The aim is to reproduce as accurately as
possible all grammatical and lexical features of the “source language” original
by finding equivalents in the “target language”. At the same time all factual

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information contained in the original text <…> must be retained in the
translation.

Hatim (2001: 62) states that in theory it is easy to see the process of
translation in terms of a harmonious relationship between two different texts and
contexts tied together through the bond of the emerging translation. He develops
the idea that in reality, the act of re-working a text is much more complex and the
following issues are closely related with the process of translation:

• The context in which the translation takes place;
• The history of the source and of the target;
• The place which the text had occupied in some literary system.

Another famous theorist Lefevere (1992) contributes to the debate and
strongly argues for a view of translation as a form of ‘re-writing’. His idea of ‘re-
writing’ focuses on the objects, concepts or customs belonging to the world that
was familiar to the writer of the original ( Lefevere, op.cit.: 41).

1.1 The Problem of Equivalence

Equivalence is a central but a very controversial concept in translation.
Approaches to the question of equivalence can differ radically: some theorists
define translation in terms of equivalence relation while others reject the
theoretical notion of equivalence, claiming that it is irrelevant or damaging.
Proponents of equivalence-based theories of translation usually define equivalence
as the relationship between a source text (ST) and a target text (TT) that allows
the TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place. Pym (1992:
37) has pointed that equivalence is supposed to define translation, and translation,
in turn, defines equivalence.

Slack (1987, quoted in Bell (1991: 6)) makes the problem of equivalence
very plain:

Texts in different languages can be equivalent in different degrees (fully or
partially equivalent), in respect of different levels of presentation (equivalent in
respect of content, of semantics, of grammar, of lexis, etc.) and at different ranks
(word-for-word, phrase-for-phrase, sentence-for-sentence).

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Languages are different from each other; they differ in forms, and these
forms have different meanings. Bell (1991: 6) states that meanings cannot
coincide totally and there is no absolute synonymy between words in the same
language. According to him, language is a code which possesses features -
phonological, syntactic, lexical and semantic – and that language use is made
possible by making selections among these sets of code features.

In translation process equivalence is a fundamental element. Different
theorists propose many classifications or types of equivalences. A translator may
decide what to choose.

Koller (1979:187-91) thinks that translation equivalence may be achieved
at any or all of the following levels:

• SL and TL words having similar orthographic or phonological features
(formal equivalence).

• SL and TL words referring to the same thing in the real world (referential
or denotative equivalence).

• SL and TL words triggering the same or similar associations in the minds
of speakers of the two languages (connotative equivalence).

• SL and TL words being used in the same or similar contexts in their
respective languages (text-normative equivalence).

• SL and TL words having the same effect on their respective readers
(pragmatic or dynamic equivalence).

The Leipzig translation scholar Otto Kade (1985, quoted in Hatim 2001:
29)) proposes the following types of equivalence:

• One-to-one equivalence, where there is a single expression in the TL for a
single SL expression.

• One-to-many equivalence, when more than one TL expression is available
for a single SL expression.

• One-to-part-of-one equivalence, when a TL expression that covers part of
a concept is designated by a single SL expression.

• Nil equivalence, when no TL expression exists for a SL expression.

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Such approaches have been useful in applied translation domains such as
terminology and technical translation.

Consequently, much attention is paid to two basic orientations in
translation. Nida (1964) calls them formal and dynamic equivalence. The
following paragraphs will be aimed at describing the differences between these
notions and relevance to the translation process.

1.2 Formal Equivalence vs. Dynamic Equivalence

Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both form
and content. As Nida (1964) explains, in such a translation one is concerned with
such correspondences as poetry to poetry, sentence to sentence, and concept to
concept. The message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible
the different elements in the source language. Formal translation attempts to
reproduce as literally and meaningfully as possible the form and content of the
original.

In contrast to formal equivalence, dynamic equivalence is not so
concerned with matching the TL message with the SL message. According to
Nida (1964), a translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of
expression and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behaviour relevant within
the context of his or her own culture.

Both standards (formal and dynamic equivalence) are acceptable in
translation, but Nida (op.cit) noticed that during the last fifty years there has been
a marked shift from the formal to the dynamic dimension.

As it was mentioned previously, formal equivalence (or FE) translation is
basically source- oriented. It is designed to reveal as much as possible of the form
and content of the original message. Nida (op.cit.) expands his thought of formal
equivalence and claims that a FE translation attempts to reproduce several formal
elements including: (1) grammatical units, (2) consistency in word usage, and (3)
meanings in terms of the source context. He also mentions the fact that a
consistent FE translation will contain much that is not readily intelligible to an
average reader. One must usually supplement such translations with marginal
notes.

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In contrast with formal equivalence translations, other kinds of translation
are oriented toward dynamic equivalence. In such a translation the focus of
attention is directed not so much toward the source message as toward the
receptor response. Nida (1964, op.cit.) defines a dynamic equivalence (DE)
translation as “the closest natural equivalent to the source language message”.
This type of definition contains three essential terms: (1) equivalent, which points
toward the source language message, (2) natural, which points toward the
receptor language, and (3) closest, which binds the two orientations together on
the basis of the highest degree of approximation.

Another theorist Newmark (1988: 47) prefers the terms semantic and
communicative translation. He says that a semantic translation is made at the
author’s linguistic level, and a communicative - at the readership’s. Semantic
translation is personal and individual. Newmark (1988) thinks that the purpose of
any translation should be to achieve “equivalent effect”, i.e. to produce the same
effect (or one as close as possible) on the readership of the translation as was
obtained on the readership of the original.

From what has been said, it becomes clear that equivalence has always
been a kernel concept in translation. Different scholars used various names for the
term, but all of them agreed that it was necessary to reflect the main idea of the
source text and to receive a certain impression from the readership.

1.3 The Problems of Linguistic Untranslatability

In modern times some scholars have realized that something from one
language cannot be fully translated into another; in other words, there is an
inevitable loss of meaning.

Catford (1965), a celebrated translation scholar, raises the issue of
untranslatability with a new perspective. He argues that linguistic untranslatability
is due to the syntactical and lexical difference in the SL and the TL whereas
cultural untranslatability is due to the absence of relevant situational features in
the TL.

Another theorist Mounin (1972, quoted in Bassnet, 2004: 42)) believes
that:

1) Personal experience in its uniqueness is untranslatable.

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2) In theory the base units of any two languages (e.g. phonemes, monemes,
etc.) are not always comparable.

3) Communication is possible when account is taken of the respective
situations of speaker and hearer, or author and translator.

In other words, Mounin (op.cit.: 42) believes that linguistics demonstrates
that translation is a dialectic process that can be accomplished with relative
success. That means that language is a very subtle phenomenon, and the translator
has to consider many factors in order to transfer the message of the original
correctly.

Wilss (2001: 49) says that The translatability of a text can thus be
measured in terms of the degree to which it can be re-contextualized in TL, taking
into account all linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. <…> The translatability of
a text is thus guaranteed by the existence of universal categories in syntax,
semantics, and the (natural) logic of experience. <…> Linguistic untranslatability
occurs when the linguistic form has a function beyond that of conveying factual
relationships and is therefore a constituent part of the functional equivalence to
be achieved. This, for example, is true of play on words, which can usually be
adequately translated semantically but not stylistically.

The translator frequently finds himself in a difficult situation during the
translation process, a situation which becomes the more difficult to master.
Newmark (1988: 176) claims that tracing apparently “unfindable” words and
phrases can be a difficult and time-consuming task; it is a problem in translation
theory which is often considered to lie outside the scope of theoretical or applied
linguistics. The translation theorist should propose a frame of guidelines for this
task. The purpose of this is to put some order into the translator’s search for the
meaning of unfindable words. According to Newmark (op.cit.: 177), the most
common types of unfindable words in the source language text are:

(1) Neologisms, recent and original, including newly coined forms, devised
phrases, new collocations, compound nouns, new terminology, old words
and phrases with new senses, acronyms, abbreviations, blends, new
combinations of morphemes.

(2) Dialect and specialized language which is spoken more often than written.
(3) Colloquialisms, slang, taboo words – now usually recorded, but not in all

senses.

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(4) Third language or TL words waywardly introduced into SL text.
(5) New or out-of-date geographical and topographical terms and ‘rival’

alternative names.
(6) Names of small villages, districts, streams, hillocks, streams. They may be

real or invented, and may or may not have local connotations.
(7) Names of obscure persons.
(8) Brand names, names of patented inventions, trademarks – usually signaled

by capitalization and often more or less standard suffixes.
(9) Names of new unimportant institutions.
(10) Misprints, miscopyings, misspellings, particularly of proper names.
(11) SL, TL and third language archaisms.
(12) Unfamiliar connotations and symbolic meanings of words and proper
names.
(13) Familiar alternative terms or words.
(14) Code words.
(15) Common words with specific SL or third language cultural senses.
(16) Private language or manifestations of “underlife”. (“underlife” is the
evidence of the writer’s personal qualities or private life which can be
indirectly deduced from a reading of the SL text).
(17) External reference. The “unfindable” word may refer to an object or
activity mentioned previously, in or not in the SL text.
(18) Dictionary words. These are words that are rarely used but have time-
honoured places in the dictionary.

In his search for the unfindable words the translator should consult the SL
text writer or appropriate technical experts or source language informants who
may disagree with each other. Bilingual general and specialized dictionaries may
be consulted first.

1.4 The Problems of Cultural Untranslatability

Language and culture are completely bound up with each other. Language
“immerses” in culture, so it is the main expression and a communication tool of
cultures. Cultural differences between two languages may cause some problems in

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translation, so the problem of cultural untranslatability is a debatable topic among
scholars.

According to Wikipedia Encyclopedia, culture can be defined as all the
behaviors, ways of life, arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that are passed
down from generation to generation. Culture has been called the way of life for an
entire society. Newmark (1988: 94) defines culture as the way of life and its
manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as
its means of expression. He distinguishes ‘cultural’ language from ‘universal’ and
‘persona’ languages. Some words create problems because there is cultural
overlap between the source and the target language. Language does contain all
kinds of cultural deposits in the grammar as well as the lexis. Newmark (1988: 95)
gives the following categories of words which are difficult to translate:

(1) Ecology (flora, fauna, winds, plains, hills).
(2) Material culture (food, clothes, houses and towns, transport).
(3) Social culture (work and leisure).
(4) Organisations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts.
(5) Gestures and habits.

Linguists believe that language is a tool for human beings to process the
existing world and their own experiences. But because of cultural differences,
some languages have strong ability to ‘process’ words, while some others have
poor ability. As to the processing ways, some are easy and some complicated.
Therefore, though things or phenomena can be expressed in one language, there
may be lack of equivalents in other languages. The translating activity done in the
background of two different cultures always suffers from the untranslatability
phenomenon.

In the translating activity, a translator always comes across culturally
untranslatable factors. How to deal with them? Newmark (1988: 96) gives a
solution that “we can use some compensational means whose focus is on the
whole text rather than a single word or phrase. It compensates the loss of
meanings in the translating process by the substitutions of the target language”.
There are two kinds of compensations: the substitution and the replacement. The
substitution occurs when there are no corresponding words in the target language;
the translator can make compensation by creating new words or borrowing some
other words. Sometimes it is possible to discard the cultural features of the source

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language and translate the literal meanings only. That is to substitute the general
conception with the specific one; or to translate it directly with some expressions.
The replacement according to Newmark (op.cit.: 96) is defined as follows: “When
there is no equivalent cultural phenomenon in the target language, the translator
should put translation work into a larger cultural background in order to find out
the corresponding phenomenon and express the cultural meanings properly”.

Above all, the cultural untranslatability always exists, so there is no
absolute equivalence in translation. The main principle of translation is to be
faithful, i.e. meaning is more important than pattern; and cultural meaning is
superior to literal meaning.

1.5 The Literal vs. Free Controversy

It has been an age-old debate concerning whether translation should be
free or literal. Some translation theorists present these two aspects of the
translation process as though they were alternatives, one or the other of which is
to be opted for at one time, depending on the translator's own brand of theory or
the prevailing tradition.

Newmark (1988: 68-69), who is careful to distinguish literal translation
from word-for-word translation, maintains that literal translation is correct and
must not be avoided if it secures referential and pragmatic equivalence to the
original. It is important what the text is trying to achieve. Different scholars
discuss the question of literal and free translation, but they do not often pay
attention to the context in which translating takes place. One solution to this
problem, according to Hatim and Mason (1990: 6), is to answer such questions:
who is translating what, for whom, when, where, why and in what circumstances?

As Newmark (1988: 45) claims, up to the beginning of the nineteenth
century, many writers favoured some kind of “free” translation: the spirit, not the
letter; the sense, not the words; the message rather than the form; the matter, not
the manner. This was a revolutionary slogan of writers who wanted the truth to be
read and understood. The ideas have changed, and those linguist who believed that
language was the product of culture had to assume that it must be as literal as
possible. Newmark (1988 op. cit.: 46) defines literal translation in the following
way: The SL grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest TL

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equivalents but the lexical words are translated singly, out of context. Free
translation, according to him (op.cit.: 46) reproduces the matter without the
manner, or the context without the form of the original. Usually it is a paraphrase
much longer than the original, and not translation at all. Newmark (1988) also
believes that literal translation is the basic procedure in translation.

Literal translation is the opposite of free translation, both being used to
explain the two choices translators make in their translation practice. In all
translations both free and literal strategies can be detected, and all translators
adopted both strategies in dealing with the same piece of translation. However,
many translation theories discuss problems that are related mainly with literal
translation.

Other scholars such as Delisle et al. (1999: 155) argue that the term literal
translation is used in translation studies either to refer to a translation procedure or
strategy applied to text segments, or to a translated text which as a whole is
characterized by a high frequency of this procedure/ strategy. Dimitrova (2005:
31) claims that anyone who can read and write and who has a translation ability
and a bilingual dictionary can produce some kind of translated text applying the
procedure of literal translation. However, in order to achieve professional
competence and expertise as a translator, it is necessary to know which text
fragments can be translated literally and which cannot. Cluysenaar (1976, quoted
in Bassnet, 2004:79)) believes that the translator should not work with general
precepts when determining what to preserve or parallel from the SL text, but
should work with an eye on each individual structure, whether it be prose or
verse. As Scholes (2002) puts:

Every literary unit from the individual sentence to the whole order of
words can be seen in relation to the concept of system. In particular, we can look
at individual works, literary genres, and the whole of literature as related systems,
and at literature as a system within the larger system of human culture.

The literary text is a very complex system and literary translation is
different from translation in general for the same reasons that literature is different
from non-literary usages of languages.

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1.6 Form vs. Content

The translator should be concerned not only with what is said but also with
how it is said ( the content and the style of the message to be translated).

Hatim and Mason (op. cit., 8) raise an important question: should content
be faithfully rendered at all costs, and form only if the translation of content
allows? They develop the idea and say that the translator is here faced with what
amounts to a conflict of interests. The ideal would of course be to translate both
form and content, “without the one in any way impinging on the other” (op. cit.,
8). But many would claim that it is frequently not possible. To modify style,
however, is to deny the reader access to the world of the SL text. It is more
important to turn the producer of the SL text into someone else: to give him the
expression of a member of the TL community. Any attempts to modify in
translation could transform the characters into different people and, no doubt,
affect the meaning. In such cases, the style is the meaning. The style, in other
words, is an indissociable part of the message to be conveyed. Style is not a
property of the language system as a whole but of particular language users in
particular settings.

If a translation is to meet the four basic requirements (Newmark, 1988: 73)
of (1) making sense, (2) conveying the spirit and manner of the original, (3)
having a natural and easy form of expression, and (4) producing a similar
response, it is obvious that at certain points the conflict between content and form
(or meaning and manner) will be acute, and that one or the other must give way.
In general, translators agree that, “when there is no happy compromise, meaning
must have priority over style” (Tancock 1958: 29). What one must attempt,
however, is an effective blend of "matter and manner,"(op. cit.: 29), for these two
aspects of any message are inseparably united. Adherence to content, without
consideration of form, usually results in a flat mediocrity, with nothing of the
sparkle and charm of the original. On the other hand, sacrifice of meaning for the
sake of reproducing the style may produce only an impression, and fail to
communicate the message. The form, however, may be changed more radically
than the content and still be substantially equivalent in its effect upon the receptor.
Accordingly, correspondence in meaning must have priority over correspondence
in style. However, this assigning of priorities must never be done in a purely

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mechanical fashion, for what is ultimately required, especially in the translation of
poetry, is “a re-creation, not a reproduction “(Lattimore, 1951 quoted in Brower
(1959: 55)).

According to Bassnet (2001), form, or style, may be seen as the result of
motivated choices made by text producers. She also claims (op. cit.: 44) that
“style, in the sense the translators are retaining, is not a property of the language
system as a whole but of particular language users in particular settings. The
translator, as a language user in a setting which is generally not that of the ST
producer, has to be able to judge the semiotic value which is conveyed when
particular stylistic options are selected”. Style is used as a term distinguished from
content in writing and it stresses form or format. In other words, style means ‘how'
whereas content refers to ‘what'.

It is only natural that good form conveys the content in more sufficient and
adequate way. In translation discussion (op. cit.: 45) “faithfulness in content has
always been emphasized and treated seriously, but faithfulness in style seems to
pose more difficulty”. In literature, style is the novelist's choice of words and
phrases, and how the novelist arranges these words and phrases in sentences and
paragraphs. Style allows the author to shape how the reader experiences the work.
For example, one writer may use simple words and straightforward sentences,
while another may use difficult vocabulary and elaborate sentence structures.
Even if the themes of both works are similar, the differences in the authors' styles
make the experiences of reading the two works distinct. As Shi (2004) claims,
“Without extensive reading the capture of the so-called style is really a tough
challenge”. [Shi, 2004 from http://www.translatum.gr/journal/5/translatability-
and-poetic-translation.htm].

1.7 Problems of Poetry Translation

The translation of poetry is generally held to be the most difficult and
demanding form of translation. It has been the subject of a great deal of
discussion, particularly within the field of literary translation. It is widely
maintained that poetry translation is a special case within literary translation and
involves far greater difficulties than the translation of prose. The issues of poetry
translation are closely related to the research.The poem Anykščių šilelis and its

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translation are chosen as the main sources for revealing the main problems that
occur in poetry translation.

Raffel (1991: 95) claims that the language of poetry will always be further
removed from ordinary language than the most elaborate prose, and the poetic use
of language deviated in a number of ways from ordinary use. It is also stated that
poetry represents writing in its most compact, condensed and heightened form, in
which the language is predominantly connotational rather than denotational and in
which content and form are inseparably linked. According to Raffel (1991, op.
cit.: 95), poetry is also informed by a “musical mod” or “inner rhythm”, regardless
of whether there is any formal metre or rhyming pattern, which is one of the most
elusive yet essential characteristics of the work that the translator is called upon to
translate. In addition to the difficulties involved in accounting for content and
form, sounds and associations, the translator of poetry is often expected to
produce a text that will function as a poem in the TL.

Some theorists believe (Nabokov, 1955, Jakobson, 1959) that poetic
translation is impossible. They say that it is impossible to account for all the
factors involved and to convey all the features of the original in a language and
form acceptable to the target language culture and tradition. The others
(Browning, 1877) come to a conclusion that poetry can only be rendered literally.
Browning (1877, quoted in Selver, 1966: 26) claims that poetry translation “ought
to be absolutely literal, with [the] exact rendering of [the] words, and the words
placed in the order of the of the original”. Mathews (1966, quoted in Wilss, 2001:
89) says that to translate a poem whole is to compose another poem. According to
him, “a whole translation will be faithful to the matter, and it will ‘approximate
the form' of the original; and it will have a life of its own, which is the voice of the
translator”.

It is important to mention that within the field of literary translation, more
time has been devoted to investigating the problems of translating poetry than any
other literary mode. Lefevere (1992: 56) proposes different strategies in poetry
translation:

(1) Phonemic translation, which attempts to reproduce the SL sound in the TL
while at the same time producing an acceptable paraphrase of the sense.

(2) Literal translation, where the emphasis on word-for-word translation
distorts the sense and the syntax of the original.

17

(3) Metrical translation, where the dominant criterion is the reproduction of
the SL metre. Like literal translation, this method concentrates on one
aspect of the SL text at the expense of the text as a whole.

(4) Poetry into prose.
(5) Rhymed translation, where the translator “enters into a double bondage” of

metre and rhyme.
(6) Blank verse translation. The restrictions imposed on the translator by the

choice of structure are emphasized although the greater accuracy and
higher degree of literalness obtained are also noted.
(7) Interpretation. The substance of the SL text is retained but the form is
changed. The translator produces a poem of his own and only the title and
point of departure are common with the ST.
Newmark (1988: 165) thinks that in most examples of poetry translation,
the translator first decides to choose a TL poetic form (sonnet, ballad, blank verse,
etc.) as close as possible to that of the SL. Although the rhyming scheme is part of
the form, its precise order may have to be dropped. Secondly, he will reproduce
the figurative meaning, the concrete images of a poem. Lastly, the setting, the
“though-words”, often the various techniques of sound effect which produce the
individual impact in the later stages of re-writing. Newmark (1988) strongly
agrees that a successfully translated poem is always another poem.
A fundamental problem, however, is the lack of a theoretical basis for
standards of equivalence in poetry translation, partly because there is no overall
agreement as to what in a poetic text constitutes the basic unit of translation.
According to Holmes (1988: 54), “no translation of a poem, though, can ever be
the same as the poem itself, and what the translator should strive for, are
‘counterparts’ or ‘matchings’. These are words and other elements which fulfill
functions in the language of the translation and the culture of its readers that are
similar, “though never truly equivalent”, to those fulfilled by the words and
structures of the source poem in the language and culture of its own readers. As
Jones (1989: 197) claims, that poetry translation has been called the art of
compromise and its success will always be a question of degree.
Translators choose the most appropriate methods for themselves.
However, first of all, the main stage in translating poetry is the close analysis of
the source text, later the interpretation. Some scholars suggest that the translator

18

attempts to recreate the poetic text on the basis of the author’s intended meaning,
i.e. how the translator believes the author would have expressed him/ herself.

1.8 The Role of Translator

Every translation activity has one or more specific purposes and whichever
they may be, the main aim of translation is “to serve as a cross-cultural bilingual
communication vehicle among peoples” [Gerding-Salas, 2000 from
http://accurapid.com/journal/13educ.htm]. In the past few decades, this activity
has developed because of rising international trade, increased migration,
globalization, the recognition of linguistic minorities, and the expansion of the
mass media and technology. For this reason, the translator plays an important role
as a bilingual or multi-lingual cross-cultural transmitter of culture and truths by
attempting to interpret concepts and speech in a variety of texts as faithfully and
accurately as possible.

According to Bell (1991: 15), the translator has been defined as a
“bilingual mediating agent between monolingual communication participants in
two different language communities”, i.e. the translator decodes messages
transmitted in one language and re-encodes them in another. The particular
purposes of the translator are also important factors in translation. It is assumed
that the translator has purposes generally similar to those of the original author.
The primary purpose of the translator may be information as to both content and
form.

Venuti (1995) raises the question whether the translator should remain
invisible. The term invisibility describes the extent to which certain translation
traditions tolerate the presence of the translator in the translation. According to
Venuti (1995: 45), invisibility refers to two phenomena:

• The ‘effect of discourse’, that is, the translator’s use of language.
• A ‘practice of reading’, or the way translations are received and evaluated.

It is also added that translators remain invisible when their texts are easily
readable and when the readers perceive that the translation is not in fact a
translation but the original.

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The translator’s competence is a debatable question, and many articles
analyze it from different perspectives. Many theorists discuss the question what
the translator must know. Bell (1991: 37) thinks that the translator should possess
semantic, syntactic and pragmatic knowledge. The lack of knowledge or control in
any of the three cases would mean that the translator could not translate.
According to Anderson (1977: 89), the translator’s knowledge should consist of:

1. Grammatical competence: knowledge of the rules of the code, including
vocabulary and word-formation, pronunciation, spelling and semantic
structure, i.e. the knowledge and skills required to understand and express
the literal meaning of utterances.

2. Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge and ability to produce and
understand utterances appropriately in context.

3. Discourse competence: the ability to combine form and meaning to
achieve unified spoken or written texts in different genres. This unity
depends on cohesion in form and coherence in meaning.

4. Strategic competence: the mastery of communication strategies which
may be used to improve communication or to compensate for breakdowns.
The quality of translation depends on the quality of the translator, i.e. on

her/his knowledge, skills, training, cultural background, expertise, and even mood.
The translator should face different problems in the process of translating. The
first problem is related to reading and comprehension ability in the source
language. Once the translator has coped with this obstacle, the most frequent
translation difficulties are of a semantic and cultural nature - linguistic
untranslatability and cultural untranslatability. The translator should adopt a very
cautious attitude toward these words or expressions in order to avoid interference
and/or language misuse (Kussmaul, 1995: 63). Simply put, a translator is a person
who recreates a text in another language, attempting to keep a delicate balance
between being so literal that the text sounds awkward and unnatural in the new
language or being so free that the text has become virtually unrecognizable. A
translator has to not only translate the words, but also the concepts. To do all the
above, a translator according to Newmark (1988) must have the following things:
a native or near-native level of proficiency in both the SL (the language to be
translated from) and the TL (the language to be translated to); the ability to
thoroughly understand all that a text says and implies; and excellent writing and

20

editing skills. Ideally, the translator would also have a lot of knowledge about
both the source and target language cultures, as this affects word usage and
meaning, as well as about the author of the original document and his style of
writing.

2. TRANSLATING DISCOURSE

Discourse is a term which is used in many theoretical discussions in
literary studies and social sciences but which, unfortunately, is often not explicitly
defined. Within linguistics, discourse is used to refer to language and linguistic
structures above the level of the sentence. In discourse analysis, the term
discourse is used to refer to those elements which are seen to be rule-governed
and systematic but which do not occur at the level of the word or the phrase
(Mills, 2005). According to Newmark (1988: 54), discourse analysis can be
defined as the analysis of texts beyond and “above” the sentence. Its main
concepts are cohesion – the features that bind sentences to each other
grammatically and lexically, and coherence which is the notional and logical unity
of a text. Another theorist Stubbs (1983, 1) defines discourse as (a) concerned
with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence/utterance, (b) concerned
with the interrelationships between language and society and (c) as concerned
with the interactive or dialogic properties of everyday communication.

The translation of poetic discourse causes some problems. The translators
seek to maintain either form or content of the SL using the means of the TL. The
translation of a certain text is very individual and subjective because it depends on
the translator’s interpretation. In addition to this, different translators may
interpret a text from their points of view, and the final version may vary. In fact,
the main differences of translations are related to cohesion (the surface structure)
while the deep structure (coherence) is sought to be maintained. That is a crucial
point as one of the aims in translation is to reflect the main idea and spirit of the
original text. Undoubtedly, careless and inaccurate handling of the cohesive
elements of the SL text in the translation process would lead to a change in the
degree of cohesiveness intended by the SL author. Consequently, such a change
would certainly affect the discourse comprehension process, and in the long run,

21

the nature of the message to be negotiated through the text. To be precise, the
choice of cohesive elements affects the style and meaning of the text.

Conventionally, Riazi (2002) suggested that translators should meet three
requirements, namely: 1) Familiarity with the SL, 2) Familiarity with the TL, and
3) Familiarity with the subject matter to perform their job successfully. Based on
this premise, the translator discovers the meaning behind the forms in SL and does
his best to produce the same meaning in the TL using the TL forms and structures.
Naturally and supposedly what changes is the form and the code and what should
remain unchanged is the meaning and the message (Larson, 1984, 32).

Depending on whether we consider the language unit, to be translated, at
the level of word, sentence, or a general concept, translation experts have
recognized three approaches to translation: translation at the level of word (word
for word translation), translation at the level of sentence, and conceptual
translation. In the first approach, for each word in the SL an equivalent word is
selected in the TL. This type of translation is effective, especially in translating
phrases and proper names. However, it is problematic at the level of sentence due
to the differences in the syntax of source and target languages. Translated texts as
a product of this approach are not usually lucid or communicative, and readers
will get through the text slowly and uneasily. When translating at the sentence
level, the problem of word for word translation and, therefore, lack of lucidity will
be remedied by observing the grammatical rules and word order in the TL while
preserving the meaning of individual words. Some sentences can easily be
translated into the TL according to the grammatical rules of that language.
Translation at the sentence level may thus be considered the same as the
translation at the word level except that the grammatical rules and word order in
the TL are observed. Texts produced following this approach will communicate
better compared to word for word translation. In conceptual translation, the unit of
translation is neither the word nor is it the sentence; rather it is the concept. The
best example is the translation of idioms and proverbs. They cannot be translated
word for word; rather they should be translated into equivalent concepts in the TL
to convey the same meaning and produce the same effect on the readers.

Every type of discourse is associated with a certain schematic structure.
The schematic structure of the SL text should be taken care of in the translation

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process despite the fact that there may be differences between structures of
different languages.

2.1 Cohesion and Coherence

The two standards – cohesion and coherence – are distinct from each other
but share one crucial characteristic; they both have the function of binding a text
together by creating sequences of meaning. Coherence is most often discussed in
relation to a paragraph. A well constructed paragraph is said to be characterized
by unity and coherence. Unity is achieved when all sentences in the paragraphs
relate to a single point represented by a topic sentence. Coherence is achieved
when the sentences “follow each other in a logical order and are linked together
by transitions” (Watt, 1969 quoted in Gutwinski, 1974: 27). A paragraph is more
coherent when the author has provides transitions between thoughts expressed in
its sentences. It is well established that the structure of a text contains more than a
collection of sentence structures; its meaning is determined by the logical relations
between sentences. Coherence can be defined, following Beaugrande (1980,
quoted in Hatim and Mason, 1990: 195), as the procedures which ensure
conceptual connectivity, including (1) logical relations, (2) organization of events,
objects and situations, and (3) continuity in human experience. Coherence is
usually reflected using the cohesive means which are likely to be language -
specific or text– specific.

The term ‘coherence’ is often studied under the heading of ‘cohesion’.
According to Newmark (1988), cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical,
and other relations which link various parts of a text. These relations or ties
organize and, to some extent, create a text, for instance, by requiring the reader to
interpret words and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the
surrounding sentences and paragraphs. Cohesion is a surface relation, and it
connects together the actual words and expressions that we can see or hear.
Moreover, it does not constitute the discourse structure but reflects it partly.
Halliday and Hasan (1976: 4) suggest that the concept of cohesion is a semantic
one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text and that define it as
a text. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse
is dependant on that of another. The one presupposes the other in the sense that it

23

cannot be effectively decoded except by recourse to it. When this happens, a
relation of cohesion is set up, and the two elements, the presupposing and the
presupposed, are thereby at least potentially integrated into a text. Halliday and
Hasan (1976) identify five main cohesive devices in English: reference,
substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

The term reference is traditionally used in semantics for the relationship
that exists between a word and what it points to in the real world. Instead of
denoting a direct relationship between words and extra-linguistic objects,
reference is limited here to the relationship of identity which exists between two
linguistic expressions. Substitution and ellipsis, unlike reference, are
grammatical rather than semantic relationships. In substitution, an item is replaced
by another item. Ellipsis involves the omission of an item. In other words, in
ellipsis, an item is replaced by nothing. This is a case of leaving something unsaid
which is nevertheless understood. Conjunction involves the use of formal
markers to relate sentences, clauses and paragraphs to each other. Unlike
reference, substitution and ellipsis, the use of conjunction does not instruct the
reader to supply missing information either by looking for it elsewhere in the text
or by filling structural slots. Instead, conjunction signals the way the writer wants
the reader to relate what is about to be said to what has been said before. Lexical
cohesion refers to the role played by the selection of vocabulary in organizing
relations within a text. It can be said that lexical cohesion covers any instance in
which the use of a lexical item recalls the sense of an earlier one.

Newmark (1988: 55) claims that “The more cohesive, the more formalized
a text, the more information it, as a unit, affords the translator”. Sometimes the
translator can “over-translate” or deliberately omit the cohesive devices. Their
main purpose in the text is to maintain the reader’s attention. If a translator wants
the communication to be successful, he or she has to maintain both cohesion and
coherence.

2.2 Register and Dialect

The world of discourse is wide, therefore, it is important to concentrate on
the problems that are urgent in translation process. Speaking about the parameters
of discourse, dialect and register features become essential aspects for translators.

24

According to Hatim & Mason (1990: 39), language varieties according to
user are called dialects which, while capable of displaying differences at all
levels, differ from person to person primarily in the phonic medium. The other
dimension relates to the use to which a user puts language, and varieties according
to the use are known as registers and, unlike dialects, differ from each other
primarily in language form (e.g. grammar and lexis). Depending on the user,
language varies in several respects. Hatim & Mason (1990) distinguish idiolectal,
geographical, temporal, social and standard/ non-standard variations.
Geographical dialect is restricted to a certain area. An awareness of geographical
variation is essential for translators and interpreters. Accent, for example, is one of
the more recognizable features of geographical variations and is often a source of
problems. Rendering ST dialect by TL standard has the disadvantage of losing the
special effect intended in SL. Temporal dialects reflect language change through
time. Each generation has its own linguistic fashions and creates new coinages.
Such recent coinages may constitute a translation problem particularly if
dictionaries are not keeping pace with current usage. Translators of texts from
earlier times encounter considerable problems concerning the use of either archaic
language or the modern idiom in their target text. In literary translation, there is
the added consideration of aesthetic effect. In addition to geographical and
temporal dimensions, social differentiation is also reflected in language. Social
dialects emerge in response to social stratification within a speech community.

One more issue is the distinction between standard and non-standard
dialects. The way a standard evolves is a complex process which is enhanced or
hindered by factors such as education and the mass media. In understanding and
describing standards and non-standards, it is, therefore, important to take into
consideration functional variation and the way this finds expression in language.
In situations where two or more codes exist in a speech community, code
switching is not random, and the translator or interpreter, like all language users,
must be able to recognize the question of identity involved.

Another important aspect of user-related variation, which clearly illustrates
the overlap between the different varieties, is the individuality of a text user, or
idiolect. Although it is difficult to isolate and describe idiolectal differences on the
basis of one text or a single encounter, the uniqueness of an individual’s speech
represents an important aspect of language variation in general. In fact, idiolectal

25

variation subsumes features from all the other aspects of variety discussed:
temporal, geographical, social, etc. This conforms to the notion that all types of
variation may be viewed in terms of a ‘continuum’, which features from the
several areas of variation in constant interaction.

Register is also significant when speaking about the problems in the
translation process. In the words of Halliday (1964), register is the term employed
for the kind of variety which is distinguished according to use. Halliday & Hasan
(1985:39) define register as "a configuration of meanings that are typically
associated with a particular situational configuration of field, mode, and
tenor...[which must] include the expressions, the lexico-grammatical and
phonological features, that typically accompany or realize these meanings". There
are clues or indices in the language that help to predict what the register of a given
text (spoken or written) is. For instance, the phrase Once upon a time is as an
indexical feature that signals that it might be a folk tale.

In linguistics, a register is a subset of a language used for a particular
purpose or in a particular social setting. According to the degree of formality,
registers may be divided into formal, neutral and informal. Many linguists
distinguish standard and free registers. Halliday & Hasan (1985) propose the
terms closed and more open registers. Closed register is a kind of register in which
there is no scope for individuality, or for creativity. The range of possible
meanings is fixed. An example of restricted registers is the language of
international telecommunications. More open are the registers of headlines,
technical instructions or legal documents. Various kinds of conversational
strategies are the most open-ended kind of register, the register of informal
narrative and spontaneous conversation. The poetic discourse comes into the
category of a free or open-ended register. This makes some difficulties for
translators because the texts that belong to free registers abound in means of
expressions. The translator’s task is to cope with all expressions given in the ST
and to translate them so that the form and content would be maintained. The
register may be defined as a combination of lexical and grammatical means.
Expanding the idea of different structures between the SL and the TL, it is
important to mention that any inadequacies of register affect the style of the
original text. The translator should be aware of the fact that although the same
registers may exist in different cultures, they may in fact be structured or

26

composed in a different way. In addition to this, they are culture – specific. For
this reason, the translators have to decide upon the means which reflect the SL
author’s ideas and cultural value of the ST.

Register, or context of situation as it is formally termed, "is the set of
meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns that are typically drawn upon
under the specific conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in
the realization of these meanings" (Halliday, 1978: 23). It is concerned with the
variables of field, tenor and mode.

According to Halliday & Hasan (1976: 22), the field is the total event, in
which the text is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or
writer. Gregory & Carroll (1978: 7) define that the field of discourse is the
consequence of the user's purposive role, what his language is 'about', what
experience he is verbalizing, 'what is going on' through language. The linguists
agree that the field is not the same as subject matter. Firstly, it might be
characterized by a variety of subject matters (e.g. political discourse as a field may
be about law and order, taxation or foreign policy). Secondly, in certain fields
(e.g. a swimming lesson), use of language is ancillary. In other words, it is only
when subject matter is highly predictable in a given situation.

Bell (1991: 186) states that any sender of messages has a relationship with
his receiver(s), and this relationship is reflected intentionally or unintentionally.
The term defining this relationship is called tenor. The tenor consists of a number
of overlapping and interacting scales or levels: formality, politeness,
impersonality, and accessibility. Formality usually depends on the audience.
Politeness reflects the social distance between the sender and receiver. The greater
the distance between participants, the greater the degree of politeness may be
anticipated. Impersonality is a measure of the extent to which the producer of a
text avoids reference to him/ herself or to the hearer/ reader. Such avoidance is
more common in written texts and is signaled by “it” as a subject, passive
constructions or abstract nouns. Accessibility shows the assumptions the sender
has made about the knowledge he or she shares with the receiver. The more the
writer or speaker assumes is shared, the less needs to be made explicit in the
surface structure of the text and more inaccessible the text becomes to the reader
or listener who lacks the assumed shared knowledge.

27

Tenor of discourse is an area in which the translator has to keep his head.
If translating into English the translator uses a formal English tenor, he would
probably do well to use it consistently, so the reader begins to appreciate that this
formality is the norm in a certain situation.

Mode is slightly more problematic. Halliday's initial definition of mode as
"the medium or mode of the language activity" (1964:91) is somewhat circular.
He (1985:12) later clarifies this as "the symbolic organisation of the text, the
status that it has, and its function in the context, including the channel".
Communication may involve single or multiple channels. Speech, for example,
operates in both the visual and the audio channel and, if the participants are close
enough to each other. Writing is limited to the single, visual channel. Mode is
perhaps best seen as the physical medium of communication, along with the
choices this provides and the limitations it imposes. According to Hatim & Mason
(1990: 49), “mode refers to the medium of the language activity. It is the
manifestation of the nature of the language code being used”. As Gregory (1980)
claims, “modes of discourse are the linguistic consequences of users’ relationships
to language’s two mediums, speech and writing”. Within speaking it is important
to distinguish between speaking spontaneously or non-spontaneously. Non-
spontaneous speech is more complex. It may be reciting or it may be speaking of
what is written.

Registers and dialects are the two sorts of variety of a language. A dialect,
or dialectal variety was defined as a variety of language according to the user.
That is, the dialect is what we speak habitually, depending in principle on who we
are; and the means where we come from, either geographically in the case of
regional dialects, or socially in the case of social dialects. A register was defined
as a variety according to use. In other words, the register is what we are speaking
at the time, depending on what we are doing and the nature of the activity in
which the language is functioning. The translator should be aware of the varieties
of the SL and the TL in order to produce a good translation of the ST and to avoid
serious inadequacies concerning the form and the content of the text.

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II. TRANSLATION INADEQUACIES IN ANYKŠČIŲ ŠILELIS

Anykščių šilelis by Antanas Baranauskas holds a special place in
Lithuanian poetry. The poem has drawn the attention of many translators. In 1919
it was translated into Polish, in 1950 – in Russian. Nowadays it is read in German,
Latvian, and even Japanese. The poem was translated into English by N. Rastenis
and P. Tempest; the translation of the poem by P.Tempest was chosen for the
analysis, because it better reveals the form and the content of the original
(Vabalienė, 1982: 178).

To translate the poem which consists of 342 lines is not easy. It requires
the knowledge of the Lithuanian folklore, history as well as the information about
rich flora and fauna. The translator also has to recognoze the dialect of Anykščiai
region (Vabalienė, op. cit.: 178).

While analyzing the translation of Anykščių šilelis, it is impossible to avoid
the general themes of the poem. The poem becomes a metaphor of unconquered
and invincible Motherland. A. Baranauskas showed the emotional attitude towards
the country people who preserved their native language. He also began to speak
about ties between nature and human spiritual wealth. The poem relates the
dramatic history of the forest of Anykščiai very truthfully, starting with the holy
woods of heathen era and ending with willful acts of czarist officials. The poem
reconstructs the prehistory of the forest; later, the author reveals how it changed,
decayed, and grew again.

Comparing the structure of the original poem with its translation, some
general observations arise. The ST is written using the syllabic prosody, and in the
TT the translator chooses iambic pentameter which is particularly common in the
English poetry. In addition to this, P. Tempest tries to keep the intonation that is
similar to the ST. The number of lines of the TT corresponds to the ST. Coming
deeper into the close analysis of the ST and the TT text it is important to mention
that the comparison of the ST with the TT is based on three types of translation
inadequacies: additions, omissions and alterations (Hatim & Mason, 1994: 12).

1. Additions
Addition might be defined as any textual segment included in the TT by
the translator on his/her own account and not motivated by any explicit or implicit

29

content of the original text. Additions might be expressed by separate lexical units
or by syntactic structures. It is also important to mention that the pure forms of
additional lexical items or syntactic structures are rare. Frequently additions come
together with omissions because certain lexical or syntactic items from the ST are
usually replaced by some other components in the TT. For this reason the new
components serve as additions. In the research the classification of translation
inadequacies into additions, omissions and alterations was based on the author’s
personal estimation which type of changes becomes prevalent in the TT.

Let us consider the following example:

Čia paliepių torielkos po mišką išklotos,
Čia kiauliabudės pūpso lyg pievos kemsotos…
c.f.:
Here thrive the mushrooms that are nicknamed “swine”,
While others round as plates lie flat and shine.

The Forest of Anykščiai is rich in diction related to plants. From the given
stanza we observe the author’s ability to depict the natural phenomena clearly
with individual definiteness. The poet chooses the details so that they evoke our
imagination. The content of associations is clearly defined. Besides, the content is
related to our feelings, the concreteness of the material world and everyday
occurrences. To be more precise, the appearance of mushrooms is associated with
different objects used in everyday life (Riškus, 1982: 221). According to
Gutwinski (1974), text might be developed either through the participant line or
the event line. Looking closer at the discourse of the ST, we can state that the
coherence is maintained through the participant line paliepių torielkos and
kiauliabudės and the event line išklotos, pūpso . However, the TT lacks the same
vividness and expression as the ST. In the TT the translator finds it hard to choose
the equivalents for these kinds of mushrooms; therefore, we come across a
hyperonymic nomination mushrooms which is explained by the descriptive
construction that are nicknamed swine. The latter phrase gives some additional
meanings that cannot be found in the ST and compensate the omission of
torielkos. A certain kind of mushrooms paliepių is not mentioned at all. The

30

descriptive substitution others round as plates is used instead and, consequently,
the event line becomes longer.

The omission of some items modify the understanding of the text in some
cases but, as we will see later, the translator chose excellent equivalents to
disclose the main idea of the ST.

The translator aims at maintaining the translation close to the
original and adds different linguistic means. Let us analyse the following extract
closer:

Kur toj puikybė jūsų pasidėjo?
Kur ramus jūsų ūžimas nuo vėjo…
c.f.:
Where are your former charms? Where did they go?
Where is your humming when the wind would blow…

The lines are taken from the introductory part of Anykščių šilelis where the
landscape of the contemporary forest is presented as miserable and gloomy. The
author of the ST speaks in rhetorical questions which imply that the forest was a
restful and majestic place in the past. The personal pronoun jūsų serves as a
reference to šilelis. In the TT one of the most noticeable feature is the syntactic
parallel constructions Where are your former charms? Where did they go? They
are very similar in meaning and are used to stress the idea of the ST. The pronoun
they together with your former charms do not provide any additional meaning.

In the following excerpt we can observe a mixed type of inadequacies:

Ir senos pušys siūravo, braškėjo?

c.f.:
And rock your pines as centuries ago?

The translator, on the one hand, uses the addition, on the other hand, the
omission of some expressive means. A very significant feature is the structure of
sentences in English and Lithuanian. In the ST the text is developed through the
event line which is expressed by lexemes siūravo, braškėjo. In the TT the event
line is expressed using stylistically neutral nominalization rock. The translator
could not find a suitable equivalent, so he chose the phrase as centuries ago to
keep the rhyme of the ST.

31

A different structure of the ST and the TT is seen in the following stanza:

Ieva, gluosna ir blendis, grūšia, obelėlė;

Savo seserį skundžia liekna sedulėlė.
Vikšnos, šaltekšniai, liepos ir nesuskaityti
Kitokių medžių skyriai tarp jų išsklaistyti.
c.f.:
Here pear and apple show munificence.
The cornel rues her sister’s violence.
Here buckthorn grows, birdcherry, linden, elm
And many trees dwell in this forest realm…

The ST is developed according to the participant line, expressed through
the cohesive chain which is realized mainly by hyponymic repetitions, e.g. ieva,
gluosna, gūšia etc and which ends by a superordinate trees. In the TT parallel
constructions are used because the text is developed through both the participant
and the event line. The translator needs more cohesive ties that denote action, e.g.
show, grow. In the extract we also find the allusion to the folklore of the ST, e.g.
savo seserį skundžia liekna sedulėlė. The TT line The cornel rues her sister’s
violence does not reveal the same idea because the verb skundžia in the ST and its
translation rues have different denotations. The phrase her sister’s violence is
necessary to maintain the rhyme and to express additional information related to
the folklore of the SL.

In the following extract:

Skujom, šakelėm ir šiškom nuklotą

Kepina saulė nenaudingą plotą…
c.f.:
With needle, cone and twig the earth is strewn –
A barren waste the sun bakes hard in June…

the addition is also important to maintain the rhyme, but a certain time expression
“in June” suggest a different interpretation of the text and implies that June is the
hottest month of summer. Moreover, the differences in language structure are
evidently seen in the ST word nuklotą which implies the property of the earth and
the grammatical structure of the SL allows the author to omit the direct object.

32

However, the syntactical structure of the TL does not allow such changes, and the
phrase the earth is strewn appears.

In A. Baranauskas’ poem every plant of the forest, every bird or animal is

painted so faithfully that you have the feeling you could touch them. For instance,

mushrooms are no longer ordinary mushrooms: in the poem each of them is given

a character of its own:

Čia musmirės raupuotos, veršiakiai gleivėti,

Čia grybai ir šungrybiai vardais nežymėti.
c.f.:
Here grow milk mushrooms and fly agarics
And toadstools without name which no one picks…

The latter extract proves that the SL is rich in naming the mushrooms. The
author of the SL chooses vivid and expressive adjectives to describe the kingdom
of mushrooms, e.g. raupuotos, gleivėti. In the TT the translator omits such
descriptive adjectives and uses more neutral expressions such as milk mushrooms,
fly agarics. The cohesive chain grybai and šungrybiai in the ST implies that there
are two different categories of mushrooms: those that could be eaten and those
that could not. In the TT the translator omits one category and gives only the
additional explanatory phrase without name which no one picks to keep the rhyme
and to express the idea that the SL culture abounds in mushrooms. It is interesting
that the expressive adjectives that describe mushrooms can also tell about the
childhood of the author of the SL. As Mieželaitis (1985: 10) states, the adjectives
raupuotos and gleivėti might be related to the memories from the author’s
childhood.

One more interesting example related to additions might be seen in the
next stanza :

Ė iš visų viršesnis auga baravykas,
Valig dainuškos žodžių – “grybų pulkaunykas”:
Platus, storas, paspūtęs, lyg tartum užklotas
Ant kieto, drūto koto bliūdas palivotas.
c.f.:

33

Exceptionally big the cep here stands,
In folk song called “the mushroom who commands”.
A doughty air has he, this sturdy chap
Who bears on his thick stalk a weighty cap.

The extract shows that speaking about mushrooms in the culture of the SL
the priority is given to “the king of all mushrooms” – the cep. While describing
the boletus, the author of the ST refers to a popular folk song. The participant line
in the ST is very clear. It is developed through the chain of expressive adjectives,
e.g. platus, storas, paspūtęs, užklotas, palivotas. In the TT the translator tries to
maintain the rhyme, therefore verbal constructions are used instead of adjectives:
commands, doughty air has he, bears. Besides, the nomination pulkaunykas
implies a high military degree in the ST while in the TT text the expression who
commands is used to express the power.

The following lines describe the birds and, to be more precise, the variety
of sounds in the forest:

Čia paupėj: “ri-u ri-u ri-u” - tilvikas sušuko,
c.f.:
The snipe calls by the stream. Then in a throng…

Vis kitoki balseliai, vis kitokios bylos;

c.f.:
More calls and melodies from more throats gush:

The most striking feature noticeable in the ST is the use of the
onomatopoeia, e.g. riu, riu, riu while in the TT this expression is omitted and
more neutral means are chosen, e.g. calls by the stream. The diminutive form
balseliai in the ST is also omitted in the TT, and, to compensate for the lack of
such forms, the translator chooses two neutral nouns calls and melodies that
combine well and express the variety of sounds which is very diverse in the ST.

The analysis of the translation of Anykščių šilelis shows that there are
many cases of additions in the TT due to the inability to choose proper

34

equivalents. Nevertheless, the minor changes on the surface level do not modify
the deep structure of the text.

2. Omissions

Omissions occur whenever a given text segment of the ST and the
information it contains cannot be traced in the TT. Omissions usually occur when
the author of the ST widely uses folklore diminutives, expressive verbs, epithets,
metaphors, or other means.

Let us analyse the stanza which depicts the forest’s impact on the human:

Kur tik žiūri, vis gražu: žalia, liekna, gryna!
Kur tik uostai, vis miela: giria nosį trina!
Kur tik klausai, vis linksma: šlama, ūžia, siaudžia!
Ką tik jauti, vis ramu: šidį glosto, griaudžia!
c.f.:
All that surrounds you with such beauty glows!
With every scent the forest woos your nose
And lively sounds you hear in every part.
You sense a deep calm soothing to the heart.

The general view of the scenery in translation is not distorted, but there are
some differences on the surface level. The ST refers to syntactic parallel
construction, and the event line is clearly expressed there. Verbal nominations are
used to name the four senses, e.g. žiūri, uostai, klausai, jauti which are
characterized by words of rather wide semantics: gražu, miela, linksma, ramu.
The narrowing of meaning is achieved through stylistically marked lexemes
siaudžia, griaudžia, the metaphor giria nosį trina, the cohesive chain žalia, liekna,
gryna. In the TT all the senses are mentioned, but the translator uses a different
syntactic structure to reveal them: the text is mainly developed both through the
event line and the participant line.. Moreover, in the ST the subject is implicit
while in the TT the subject is explicit, e.g. you, all. This occurs due to the
differences of the SL and the TL. As it was mentioned previously, the structure of

35

the TL is very strict and does not allow such changes that are might be expressed
in the SL.

In the following extract
Kur jūsų paukščiai, paukšteliai, paukštytės…
Kur jūsų žvėrys, gyvuliai, žvėreliai?
Kur žvėrių olos, laužai ir urveliai?
c.f.:
Where are your birds and nestlings to be found…
Where are your living creatures large and small,
The burrows and the lairs that housed them all?

we notice that the poet uses a variety of diminutive forms, e.g. paukšteliai,
paukštytės, žvėreliai. However, the TT lacks such forms, and the neutral nouns
birds and nestlings are used instead. Also the translator cannot find the adequate
diminutive form for the nominalization žvėrys, gyvuliai, žvėreliai. He chooses a
descriptive way to depict the animals: living creatures, large and small.

The following lines are taken from the introductory and the final parts of
Anykščių šilelis:

Visa prapuolę; tik ant lauko pliko
Kelios pušelės apykreivės liko…-
c.f.:
All, all has gone: in the deserted plain
A few disfigured pines alone remain.
Dabar visa prapuolę…tik ant lauko pliko
Kelios kreivos, nuskurdę pušelytės liko…
c.f.:
Now all has gone…In the deserted plain
A few disfigured pines alone remain.

The extract illustrates the present situation of the forest which is followed
by a gloomy and sorrowful atmosphere. As we can observe, the lines are similar in
meaning and have even identical syntactic structures. The first lines which are
repeated at the end of the poem provide the so called “framing”. The repetition is

36

purposeful because the mood in the final lines in the ST kelios nuskurdę pušelytės
liko becomes more wrathful. The reader is forced to come back to the beginning
of the poem and to feel the tragedy of the forest, people and the artist (Riškus,
1982: 218).

In addition, the diction of the ST helps to maintain the atmosphere that was
described. The ST pušelės and pušelytės in the TT are changed by a neutral noun
pines. Also the translator uses the identical lines a few disfigured pines alone
remain, while the author of the ST does not. In other words, the translation of
those lines does not contribute to the same effect as the ST. The translator fails to
convey all the shifts in meaning that are felt in the original poem.

Let us look at the following stanza, which shows more cases of omission:

Miškan, būdavo, eini – tai net akį veria;
Vat taip linksmina dūšią, užu širdies tveria,
Kad net, širdžiai apsalus, ne kartą dūmojai:
Ar miške aš čia stoviu, ar danguj, ar rojuj?
c.f.:
Once walking here you found your eyes would ache:
The forest would your soul so merry make,
Your heart so glad you wondered in surprise:
Where am I – in a wood or Paradise?

This stanza of the ST is distinct for its rich dialectal expressions employed
by the ST author to describe close relations between the human and nature. Such
stylistically loaded folk expressions as net akį veria, užu širdies tveria, širdžiai
apsalus, linksmina dūšią have no corresponding equivalents in the TL. Therefore,
in the TT these expressions are neutralized when compared with the original ones,
or are simply omitted. To be exact, užu širdies tveria is omitted, while the others
are replaced by the stylistically neutral items such as your eyes would ache, would
your soul so merry make, your heart so glad. The stylistically marked lexeme
dūmojai is also changed by a more neutral nomination wondered. The foreignism
dūšia is frequently repeated in the poem and gives it some additional stylistic
shades while the translator is incapable to translate the foreignism and chooses the
neutral noun soul to achieve the same idea. However, this English variant not only

37

displays some stylistic shifts but also differs from the original text in its structure.
In the ST we observe that the text is developed mainly through the event line
while in the TT the development goes through the event and participant lines. This
could be accounted for by the syntactic structure of both languages.

Some more observations arise when analyzing the same stanza. The first
three lines of the ST contain the implicit repetition of the implied participant you
which is expressed by zero nomination. However, the patterns of English
grammar require the explicit expression of a subject which in this case coincides
with the participant. Therefore, the translator introduces the personal pronoun you
that is used repeatedly throughout the following lines, e.g. you found, you
wondered. The fourth line of both the Lithuanian and English texts contains the
explicit subject aš expressed by a personal pronoun I. However, the parallelism of
this line is violated in the TT. The textual synonyms from the ST miške, danguj,
rojuj are replaced by only two nominations wood and paradise.

In the following lines the omission of colours becomes prominent:

Ant žalio, rausvo, balkšvo dugnio taškai grybų
Tarp medžių marguliuoja iš savų sodybų.
c.f.:
Here button-mushrooms in the setting green,
Reddish or grey of their estates are seen.

The scale of colours which depicts the setting of the ST is quite rich while
in the TT the translator omits the variety of colours and limits himself only to the
setting green. The expressive verb marguliuoja, which implies a wide range of
colours speaking about different mushrooms, is substituted by stylistically less
colourful adjectives reddish or grey. The translator’s choice might be justified for
his purpose to maintain the rhyme of the poem.

Omissions also occur when the ST author uses proper nouns (e.g.
geographical names). The translator usually uses general semantic terms instead.
E.g.:

Putinai krauju varva, serbentai po Šlavę
Ir paliūnėm kur ne kur prieglaudą sau gavę.
c.f.:

38

The guelder-rose bleeds. Currants black and red
In sheltered places by the river spread.
The proper name Šlavė in the TT is omitted and replaced by a short
description of currants: black and red which is important to maintain the rhyme.
The metaphor the guelder-rose bleeds is successfully translated into the TL and
adds to the general mood of the poem.
One more example with the proper noun omitted could be given:

Tartum krauju Marčiupio pakrantes aptraukia

c.f.:
As if with blood the hillside covering…

The Forest of Anykščiai belongs to our cultural heritage. All the proper
nouns mentioned in the poem become important since they help to describe the
general landscape of Anykščiai and its districts. Moreover, the detailed
descriptions of certain places give some additional information about the author’s
background, his attitude towards the place that is being described and also can tell
a lot about the country of Lithuania. Namely, Marčiupis is a stream which flows
into the river Šventoji, and it belongs to the reservation of Anykščiai.

The omission of emotional exclamation and the proper noun that is very
conspicuous is:

Kas ten šnibžda?- Ė šnypščia iš kelmo piktoji,
Ėgi srove teškena upelė Šventoji.
c.f.:
Who whispers? It’s an adder you hear hiss
Or it’s the river laps her bank in bliss.

As we can see, the author uses emotional exclamations such as Ė, ėgi that
are repeated throughout the poem and create alliteration. Besides, the second line
Ė snypščia iš kelmo piktoji is translated employing different means. The verb
šnypščia from the ST is replaced by a phrase you hear hiss in the TT. Also the
descriptive noun piktoji which refers to a snake is changed by the noun an adder
which directly refers to the snake and does not possess any more stylistic shifts.

39

The toponym Šventoji, which goes together with the diminutive form upelė, is also
omitted in the TT. The translator substitutes them by the neutral noun river.

An obvious case of omitting describtive adjectives could be seen in the
following extract:

Ė pušelės! pušelės tos nesurokuotos!
Tankios, aukštos ir lieknos, viršūnės kvietkuotos…
c.f.:
Those pines! How slim and straight they are, how tall,
So numerous you cannot count them all!

The participant line in the ST is expressed very vividly; first of all,
diminutive forms pušelės are employed. Secondly, we witness lexical repetition
here. To describe the participant, the author uses some old-fashioned expressions
nesurokuotos, kvietkuotos. Although the rhyme is maintained, the lack of
descriptive modifiers is felt is the TT. The appearance of pines is very clearly
revealed in the ST using descriptive adjectives tankios, aukštos, lieknos. However,
the translator chooses only the adjectives straight, tall and numerous. The
inability to translate stylistically connotated words such as nesurokuotos and
kvietkuotos slightly modifies the content of the ST.

The different syntactical structure of the languages is reflected in the
following short extract where we also encounter the omissions:

Ai siaudžia gražiai miškas, netil kvėpia gardžiai,
Siaudžia, ūžia ir skamba linksmai, dailiai, skardžiai.
c.f.:
How fine are forest sounds, not only scents!
The forest hums, resounds with eloquence,

The sounds felt in the description of the forest are very harmonic and they
are described by the verbs in the SL, e.g. siaudžia, ūžia, skamba. The first two
verbs are synonymous, have a similar meaning; however, they reveal different
shades of sounds. The third verb skamba supplements the meaning of the first
two. The verb siaudžia is repeated in the second line of the ST. Emotions are
strengthened using the exclamatory ai and the adverbs linksmai, dailiai, skardžiai.

40

The translation is not as musical as the original and cannot reveal the variety of
emotions that are felt reading the ST. Another important observation is that the
structure of the ST develops only through the event line while in the TT through
both the event and the participant lines.In the following line

Ėgi antys “pry! pry! pry!” priskridę į liūną,
c.f.:
On marches ducks are landing one by one.

the omission of emotional particle Ėgi and the onomatopoeia pry, pry, pry
in the TT reduces the variety of bird sounds which is vivid and full of energy in
the ST.

The variety and importance of sounds in the poem can be traced in the
following lines. E.g.:

Tie visokie balseliai taip krūvon suplaukia.
Tartum kožnas lapelis čilba, kliauga, šaukia…
c.f.:
Each rustling, stirring leaf too joins the surge
Of sound in which these varied voices merge…

The extract shows the author’s ability to choose the best diction revealing
the beauty of the nature and the inner feelings of the hero. The translator seeks to
maintain the general mood of the poem but is powerless against the rich diction of
the SL. The lines from the ST prove that Baranauskas’ diction is rich, and his
main source is the language of people and folklore The most popular parts of the
speech employed in the poem are verbs, and the most characteristic lexical feature
is simplicity (Riškus, 1982:214). In addition, the author uses personifications, e.g.
kožnas lapelis čilba, kliauga, šaukia. However, the translation cannot fully reveal
the same effect and in some cases even violates the structure of the second line of
the ST. The chain of expressive synonymous verbs čilba, kliauga, šaukia is
substituted by a more neutral phrase varied voices merge.

Omissions are unavoidable when the translator in unable to translate
special folk diction:

Kai kur skroblynai buvę, bet skroblius išnyko,

41

Tik skroblinės torielkos dar kur ne kur liko.
Kai kur buvę visokių gan navatnų medžių:
Ir su žiedais skujuotų, lapuotų bežiedžių;
Tropnais vardais žiniuonys tuos medžius vadinę,
Visus auklėję žmonės, ne visus pažinę.
c.f.:
There were some hornbeams too, but these are gone,
Some hornbeam platters only linger on.
All sorts of trees grew here: some flowered a lot,
Some conifers did, some deciduous not.
Each by a different name the seers would call.
Folk spared them, though they did not know them all.

The translation of the latter stanza is quite accurate and correct despite
some minor inadequacies in the use of diction. It is obvious that the poet in the ST
uses special folk diction peculiar to that time, e.g. torielkos, navatnų, skujuotų,
tropnais. The diction employed by the author expresses the author’s intentions,
gives some significant impressions about the culture of that time. The translator
cannot choose the equivalent items for those lexemes, so the main solution is to
substitute them by more neutral diction. For example, the noun torielkos is
replaced by platters, the adjective navatnų is replaced by a phrase all sorts of
trees, and the descriptive adjective tropnais is rendered by a neutral adjective
different. One more observation arises due to the structural differences of the
languages. In the last line of the ST we observe the case of ellipsis. As we know,
the structure of the Lithuanian language does not require explicitly expressed
subject, while in English the subject must be explicit. In this case, the translator
had to use personal pronoun they according to the rules of an analytic language.

In the following stanza the omissions are caused mainly by differences in
diction of the ST and the TT:

Nes ir miškas lietuvį, kaip tiktai galėjęs,
Taip visados raminęs, visados mylėjęs:
Žvėrim, paukščiais ir vaisiais dengęs ir penėjęs
Ir neprietelių mušti griūdamas padėjęs;

42

Sunkioj dienoj duodavęs slaptus nuo baisybių,
Liūdnoj dienoj paveikslą visokių ramybių,
Linksmoj dienoj daugumą visokių gražybių,
Kožnam mete dėl kožno – visokių gerybių.
c.f.:
In turn the forest soothed and gave delight,
Loved Lithuania’s folk with all its might.
It clothed and fed them, sheltered them as well,
To bar the way to enemies it fell,
In evil days – a refuge from our foes,
In time of grief – a place of sweet repose,
In happy days its charm it would unfold,
At all times granting blessings manifold.

The complicated spiritual life is reflected in the memories about the
common destiny of the people and the forest. The diction and the sentence
structure in the ST is peculiar to the people of that time. For example, the
expressions neprietelių mušti, sunkioj dienoj, liūnoj dienoj, kožnam mete reflect
the language of simple people. The translation, however, employs mainly neutral
diction because the translator cannot find the equivalent items for some special
folk expressions. Looking closer at the major inadequacies in the given stanza the
most obvious one is witnessed in the third line. In the ST the function of the forest
is revealed mainly though the nominative chain, e.g. Žvėrim, paukščiais ir
vaisiais dengęs ir penėjęs while in the TT the nouns are omitted; the text is
developed through event line realized by, e.g. It clothed and fed them, sheltered
them as well. In addition to this, the structure of the TT requires the explicit
subject it and the explicit object them. Although the parallel constructions of the
ST are maintained, the translation is not identical because it does not provide the
same cultural information.

As it was mentioned before, sometimes omissions come together with
additions. This happens due to the inability to choose the proper equivalents and
the necessity to maintain the rhyme of the poem. The following extract in which
we can observe the choice of expressive adjectives employed by the author is also
rich in cases of omissions and additions:

43

Tartum pliki, išdegę, dirvonai šiškuoti
Pasipučia samanom, nuo grybų taškuoti;
Tartum iš tarpu puirių tokie kvapai kilo,
Lyg kad giria pratrūksta ar pučia iš šilo;
Tartum visa sušlamo, sučilbo, supyško
Lyg, dienai brėkštant, viduj paniurusio miško;
c.f.:
And if this wilderness sun-scorched by day
Seems carpeted with moss and mushrooms gay
And such sweet fragrance seems to fill the air
You think a pinewood has appeared somewhere
And beast and bird are stirring as at dawn
When darkness has from forest glades withdrawn,

The latter extract also proves that the diction of A. Baranauskas is rich and
colourful. The view and the motion of the landscape intertwine making a more
optimistic picture of the forest. The poet uses a great variety of expressive
adjectives that help to reveal a visual picture of the landscape, e.g. pliki, išdegę,
šiškuoti, taškuoti and also synonymous verbs sušlamo, sučilbo, supyško that
emphasize the motion rather than view. In the TT the translator employs different
means to reveal the scenery of the forest. Firstly, he omits the whole chain of
expressive adjectives that were used in the first line of the ST. We can only find
the equivalent sun-scorched for the adjective išdegę in the TT. The descriptive
adjective taškuoti, which implies a great quantity of mushrooms in the ST, is
omitted in the TT and simply substituted by a phrase carpeted with moss and
mushrooms gay which stresses not only a variety of mushrooms but also gives the
same importance to another kind of plants – moss.

There are some more obvious inadequacies especially concerning the forth
line of the ST and the TT. The idea of the ST is violated because the translator
uses different means to reveal it. The verbs pratrūksta and pučia are replaced by a
totally different verb appeared which has nothing in common with the meaning
conveyed in the ST. Also the translator adds the personal pronoun you together
with the neutral verb think to compensate for the loss of pratrūksta and pučia and
to maintain the rhyme. In the fifth line the chain of expressive verbs sušlamo,

44

sučilbo, supyško, which is obvious in the ST, is omitted in the TT, so the line does
not possess the same optimistic effect as the ST. One more important observation
is that the use of expressive verbs helps to develop the ST through the event line.
In the TT the text is developed through both the event and participant lines.

Let us analyse the following stanza in which the cases of omission and
addition are intertwined:

Ai būdavo, būdavo iš mūsų šilelio
Didžiausio patogumo, gražaus ramumėlio!
Ė tas visas ramumas po lietuvių dūšias
Lyg lygumoj vėjelis po žoleles trąšias
Plaukydamas lingavo, tamsiom vilniom tvino, -
Dažnai miške lietuvis, ko verkia, nežino.
c.f.:
There was a time, a time when beauteous calm
The forest breathed, our hearts to soothe and charm.
For Lithuanians relish calm and ease
A lush grass relishes a gentle breeze
That stirs dark ripples as it passes by:
We often weep in woods, not knowing why.

The lines present the painful memories about the past and also depict the
unity of the human feelings and nature. The extract is worth to analyze because it
also presents some major inadequacies on the surface level. The ST is rich in
diminutive forms such as šilelio, ramumėlio, vėjelis, žoleles while in the TT such
nouns are substituted by the neutral ones: forest, grass, breeze or are simply
omitted. For example, the first two lines of both the ST and the TT present
absolutely different syntactic structure. In the ST the repetition of the verb būdavo
is substituted by the TT phrase There was a time, the diminutive noun šilelio in
the first line disappears and the phrase when beauteous calm is used instead. The
structure of the second line is also strongly violated. The lexemes patogumo,
ramumėlio are omitted in the TT, and the translator uses stylistically and
syntactically different phrase our hearts to soothe and charm instead. Moreover,
the foreignism dūšia is also omitted in the TT employing only the lexemes calm

45

and ease to depict the idea of the ST. The fifth line of the ST is developed
through the event line which is realized through verbs lingavo and tvino. In the TT
the same idea is achieved through both the event and the participant lines because
of the pronoun it which is required due to the structure of the English language.
One more observation could be made concerning the last lines of the ST and the
TT. The noun lietuvis which is used to stress the importance of nationality in the
ST is omitted in the TT and the pronoun we is used as a substitute. Despite some
major inadequacies, the content and the rhyme of the original poem are
maintained.

The following stanza also presents some shifts related to translation
inadequacies:

Paskum ilgai krūtinėj šilelis kvėpuoja;
Atsidusus krūtinė lyg giria linguoja.
Lyg tartum ramumas taip dūšion įslinko,
Kad net dūšia kaip varpa pribrendus nulinko.
c.f.:
Long afterwards our lungs breathe forest air,
Our breast as gently stirs as pines do there.
Such deep tranquility pervades the soul
It bows as wheatears do when ripe and whole.

Close relationship between the human and the nature is vividly depicted in
the given extract. The poet employs the metaphor such as krūtinėj šilelis kvėpuoja,
the comparisons krūtinė lyg giria linguoja and dūšia kaip varpa pribrendus
nulinko to achieve the effect of relation. The verb įslinko in the third line of the ST
acquires stylistically connoted meaning. The translation also maintains the same
idea concerning the content, but it undergoes certain modifications comparing the
means chosen to reveal the content. For example, in the first line of the ST the
noun of wider semantics krūtinėj is replaced by a more specific term lungs, the
diminutive form šilelis is omitted in translation, so we can draw the conclusion
that the translator was powerless to choose the same equivalents which could
depict the vivid metaphor used by A. Baranauskas. Comparing the translation of
the second line to the original, we observe that the comparison is maintained
although the translator uses different means. For instance, the noun of wider

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semantics giria is substituted by a more specific noun pines which refer to a
particular species of trees. The verb do there is added to maintain the rhyme of the
poem. The third line of the ST Lyg tartum ramumas taip dūšion įslinko is
substituted by Such deep tranquility pervades the soul where the translator uses
neutral diction to achieve the same effect. The foreignism dūšion is changed by a
neutral noun soul, and stylistically connoted lexeme įslinko is replaced by the verb
pervades which has a different denotative meaning. A variety of verbs in the ST
such as kvėpuoja, linguoja, įslinko, nulinko indicate that the text is developed
mainly through the event line. In translation we come across different expressive
means and observe that the text is developed employing both the event and
participant lines.

One more case of omission together with addition might be seen in the
following extract:

Paskum po šias pakalnes, ant seno stuobryno,
Buvę pušys suaugę nuo metų šimtyno:
Tankios, aukštos, lygutės, geltonos kaip žvakės;
Viršūnės, ęsą, ūžė ir liemenys plakės.
c.f.:
But on the slopes that long ago were shorn
In course of time the pinewood was reborn.
Like yellow candles rose the tall smooth trees,
Limbs touching and crowns humming in the breeze.

While comparing the sentences of the SL and the TL we should not forget
that the structure and word order cannot be identical. As it was mentioned before,
the structure of the Lithuanian and English languages is different, so we only need
to pay attention to the cases with major translation inadequacies. In the given
extract the main mismatches arise comparing the structure of the ST and the TT.
To be more exact, word order in the ST does not correspond to that in the TT.
Looking closer at the first line we can observe the omission of the stylistically
connoted lexeme stuobryno in the TT, which indicates the place and creates a
visual effect in the ST. In the TT it is substituted only by a descriptive phrase that
long ago were shorn. Another significant issue is the description of pines in the
ST. The poet uses a chain of adjectives, which create a visual image to describe

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those majestic trees, e.g. Tankios, aukštos, lygutės, geltonos kaip žvakės. Although
the main idea is not distorted in the TT and the translator changes the word order
to describe the pines, the effect is slightly different from that of the original.

The next stanza presents an important period in Lithuania’s history;
consequently, the cases of omission appear due to the untranslatability of the folk
language:

Atvažiavo kučmeistras, šilą apžiūrėjo,
Ravus ant kelių kasė, liesvinčius padėjo,
Ir paganią užgynė, ir grybaut užgynė;
Slapta pardavinėjo ir per naktis skynė;
Vyresnybei melavo; ė žmonėms, kai verkė,
Nasrus kamšė kulokais, kraujo klanan merkė
Ir kas metai Anykščius miško kuoptų varė;
Išpūstėjęs iščinto, zasiekus padarė…
c.f.:
Then came a forester who toured the site,
Dug ditches, posted watchmen day and night,
Barred grazing, mushroom picking…He seemed strict
But on the sly sold wood and mushrooms picked.
He lied to his superiors; when folk
Complained he punched them and their teeth he broke.
He rooted pinetrees up year after year
And soon there was again a wasteland here…

The stanza depicts how the forest was destroyed by the representatives of
the czarist officials. The lines also reveal one of the most important period in the
history of Lithuania – the serfdom. The stanza is also rich in diction peculiar to
that time, e.g. kučmeistras, liesvinčius, paganią, etc. Though the translator
maintains the coherence in the TT, there are changes on the surface level. The
diction that belongs to the folk language is untranslatable. The translator uses
neutral diction to reveal the same idea and to maintain the rhyme of the poem. To
be more specific, the nouns referring to officials such as kučmeistras and
liesvinčius are replaced by a forester and watchmen. The cruelty of the czarist
officials is expressed through a saying Nasrus kamšė kulokais, kraujo klanan

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merkė. The translation of the line is not the same as the original because it lacks
the same intensity of expression. One more significant observation should be
made analysing the same line. The subject and the object in the ST is implicit
while the grammatical structure of the translation requires the direct object them
and their, as well as the direct subject he.

On the whole, the omissions occur frequently when the translator touches
upon the original text. Certain substitutes are chosen in order to maintain the
rhyme and the main thought of the ST. Sometimes the translation of the original
does not affect the whole, but sometimes it can even violate the author’s
intentions. Actually, it is impossible to avoid such problems while the two
languages are obviously different from each other. However, to avoid very serious
problems in translation, the translator should be familiar with the two languages
and their lexical, stylistic and cultural peculiarities.

3. Alterations

Alterations as well as additions and omissions are unavoidable while
translating any poetic text. The more culturally bound a text is, the more
alterations occur. They are related to the changes of expressive means or certain
modifications in meanings. Alterations in the translation are sometimes connected
to additions and omissions. As it was mentioned previously, it is hard to find a
pure form of transformation. In Anykščių šilelis alterations are related to some
changes in meaning. To be clear, the translation violates the author’s intentions
and does not reveal the same information. From the below given examples we will
see how such modifications affect the understanding of the original text.

In the following stanza

Lyg tartum rūmas suiręs, nudegęs,

Lyg kokio miesto išgriuvus pūstynė,
Lyg kokio raisto apsvilus kemsynė!..
c.f.:
As ruined palaces rank weeds possess,
Or heaps of rubble where a town once teemed,
Or bone-dry moss where marshland softly gleemed.

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