Short Sentences of Responsive Replies from Dialogues of ‘Hamlet’ in Russian Translations

Abstract

The article explores dialogic units with responsive utterances containing brief narrative structures consisting of representing or substituting words, such as we do, it will, they are not, etc. The linguistic material is sourced from the text of Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’ and its translations into Russian by N. Polev, A. Kroneberg in the 19th century, B. Pasternak, M. Lozinsky, A. Radlova in the 20th century, V. Ananyin, I. Peshkov in the 21st century. The lexical-grammatical and stylistic characteristics of concise English structures are discussed, along with the translators’ approaches to their interpretation. It is revealed that in the translation texts, representative sentences are reflected by repeating individual words of the initiating utterance (sledi [follow] — slezhu [I follow]), idiomatic expressions (chego net, togo net [what is not, that is not]), sentence-words (da, net, vernо [yes, no, correct]), combinations like (sovershenno vernо [absolutely correct], tochno tak [just like that]), imperative markers (ne somnevaytes’ [do not doubt]). The authors of Russian translations maintain the function of utterances with representative sentences in Shakespeare’s text: in terms of character interaction — as an informative or phatic speech element ensuring coherence in dialogues, in terms of audience impact — as a tool helping viewers better navigate the stage events.

Keywords

• translation studies
• sentence representatives
• shakespeare translations
• historical syntax
• authorial style
• dialogic units
• responsive utterances