3/6/2016

The first translation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect, uses a passive voice and a simple sentence structure.  The translation uses words such as uneasy, transformed, and gigantic to give the sentence a certain tone of unaccepted surprise.  The sentence is direct as far as structure is concerned given that there are no commas or separating punctuation.  It uses a chronological sequence to organize the sentence and imagery to give a certain tone.

The second translation, Gregory Samsa woke from uneasy dreams one morning to find himself changed into a giant bug, uses a direct structure to bring across its purpose.  It uses words such as uneasy, changed, and giant to add meaning to the sentence.  These words have a different connotation than the first translation in that giant and changed have a smaller weight attached to them than gigantic and transformed.  This sentence also has a simple structure that has no separating punctuation.

The third translation, When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning he found he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug, used a very similar sentence structure to the second translation.  It includes diction such as troubled, transformed, and enormous to give the feeling that Gregor had a unusual night. This sentence also has a simple syntax with little punctuation.

The fourth translation, One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin, uses a very different syntax than the other translations.  This sentence uses a lot of commas which breaks the sentence up into different thoughts and is organized chronologically.  It uses diction such as agitated, transformed, monstrous, and vermin to give the feeling that Gregor is not pleased with what happened. This translation is the most different when it comes to syntax of the sentences as it is broken up by commas but still retains the same order of the words.

Even though these sentences seem similar at first glance, they are different in several word choices that have different connotations.  The adjectives used to describe his dream are uneasy, troubled, and agitated which all have slightly different meanings.  Uneasy and troubled give the feeling of wariness and uncertainty while agitated has a more angry and irritated connotation.  The diction used to describe the insect that Gregor turns into is different in the translations from insect, bug, and vermin.  These words have different meanings as insect and bug seem less disgusted and vile than the word vermin, which has the connotation of being repulsive.  The differing diction used in these translations gives the sentence a slightly different meaning as these words have feelings associated with them that can change the tone that the narrator has.  The fourth translation has a much more negative and repulsive tone from the narrator as the descriptive words and imagery it uses has a much more negative connotation.  The syntax of the first three translations are very similar in that they all do not contain any punctuation except for a period and have a chronological ordering.  The fourth translation contains multiple clauses broken up by commas and adds a broken speech when reading.  The syntax changes the way the text flows in the readers mind and can make the sentence seem more direct when it doesn't have any punctuation.

These different translations carry slightly different meanings and can affect the tone that the reader believes the narrator has.  Determining if one translation is more effective than another is dependent on the tone of the rest of the novel and which sentence matches that tone better.  If the tone of the novel in its entirety was more accepting and confused, the first three translations would be more effective but if the novel has a more repulsive tone the fourth translation is more effective.  It is difficult to determine which translation is more effective because the translator must try to capture the tone and feeling that the author intends for the novel using words that carry a slightly different connotation in another language.  Languages do not always exactly translate and the words that translators must use will not exactly match the feelings that the author intends for the novel and the translator must choose words as best they can.  Translators must try to match both the diction and the syntax of the original text in order for the novel to carry the same tone that the author intended in order to give the correct purpose of the novel.