Translation as a journey through possible and impossible worlds

Abstract

In this paper, translation is examined from the perspective of the semantics of possible worlds. The consequences of this viewpoint are explored, particularly in relation to the metaphor of traveling through possible and impossible worlds in translation practice. Special attention is given to cases where there are disparities between the world of the original text and the world of the translated text. For example, in the case of French subjunctive forms, which are grammatically mandatory in the original language, they often need to be replaced with indicative forms in the target language, such as Russian. Externally, this transformation appears as a change from expressing a possibility in one world to making a statement about the actual world. Various techniques for transforming French inserts in the original Russian text (in Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace") are analyzed and compared with the actual French translation found in a French edition of the same text by a Francophone translator. The study demonstrates that the concept of language translatability does not align completely with the concept of text translatability, as the latter is influenced by various external and internal factors related to cultural contexts, traditions, trends, and more. Viewing text translation as a journey through worlds also involves elements from the real worlds that belong to the original author, the translator, and the recipients of the translated text within their socio-cultural contexts.

Keywords

• translation
• possible-world semantics
• romance subjunctive
• russian conjunctive
• contrastive linguistic analysis