Gender problems of translation of English language poetry in the paradigm of literary theory and the extra-linguistic aspect of translation studies (based on the poem 449 «I died for Beauty» by E. Dickinson)
Authors:   PHEI «European University», Skrypnyk Tamara 
Published: December 2020

The paper considers the poem 449 written by Emily Dickinson and its translations into Ukrainian and Russian. The translation of the grammatical syntactic syntagma «I died for Beauty…» is also analyzed. The work of V. Sdobnikov and O. Petrova «Theory of Translation» where the scholars propose to apply literary and extra-linguistic aspects of translation theory was especially important for the present research. The principles of literary and linguistic translation theory have been applied in the process of philological and linguistic-stylistic types of analysis. The literary studies theory emphasizes the principle of vocabulary adequacy in the original work and its translations. The extra-linguistic aspect of the linguistic translation theory has impelled us to consider the morphological category of gender of the personal pronoun «I» in singular and the verb «died» in the past tense. In modern (synchronous) English, the morphological category of gender of the personal pronoun in the first person and the verb in the past tense are not denoted by morphemes, whereas in the Ukrainian and Russian languages the verb in the past tense has the suffix «l» and the ending «а» for the feminine gender. That is why some translators have mistakenly interpreted the image of the poem's first persona by creating the image of a lyrical male character, which violated the gender right of the poetess. The translators were to take into account the biographical right of the poetess to write on her own behalf, and the fact that in most works E. Dickinson revealed her inner world in the first person and applied the personal pronoun «I» in her poems very often, which testifies to the femininity of her poetry. Russian translators M. Zenkevich and A. Kudrjavytsky translated the structure «I died for Beauty» by using the words of the lyrical woman-character. They recreated the image of a lyrical heroine who is capable to give her life for Beauty. Another translator V. Markova created the lyrical male character. In her translation both characters are opposed to each other, because the poet is «he» while the Beauty is «she». In Markova’s translation it is the man who died for beauty, love and truth. Ukrainian translators D. Pavlychko and N. Tuchynska also created the lyrical male character and interpreted the image from the first person that changed the original author’s artistic message. It should be noted that the method of character masculinization in the translation of grammatical syntactic syntagma has changed the main idea of the work. This violated the gender right of the poetess to create the image of a noble lyrical heroine who is able to give her life for Beauty. The article also focuses on the peculiarities of the syntax of the poem, the special meaning of dashes in the original text and its translations as well as the method of character onimization. The lexical adequacy of the poem under consideration and its translations into Ukrainian and Russian are analyzed.