HANS-HARRY DRÖBIGER

Universität Vilnius,

Faculty of Humanities, Kaunas

Research areas: cognitive linguistics, metaphor, metonymy, translation theory and practice.

ON THE HANDLING OF GERMAN CULTURE-SPECIFIC TERMS IN THE LITHUANIAN TRANSLATIONS OF THE CHILDREN’S AND HOUSEHOLD TALES BY THE BROTHERS GRIMM

Equivalents for German culture-specific terms in the Lithuanian translations of the Brothers Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of conceptual metonymy in the denotative equivalence of German culture-specific terms in Lithuanian. It thus attempts an interdisciplinary connection between translation studies and cognitive linguistics.

The object of study is the Children’s and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm, whose 200 tales form a closed research corpus and, as 19th-century texts, constitute a source for socio-historical and cultural-historical research. The main method for examining equivalence is linguistic comparison, supported by the lexicographic codification of culture-specific terms in German and Lithuanian dictionaries.

The section “Theoretical Foundations” briefly explains the concepts of fairy tale, culture, realia, culture-specific terms, metonymy, and Werner Koller’s (2011) system of equivalence types. The section “Culture-Specific Terms in the KHM: Between Equivalence and Metonymy” discusses the handling of German culture-specific terms in the Lithuanian

KEYWORDS: fairy tale, Brothers Grimm, culture-specific term, contiguity, metonymy, equivalence, German language, Lithuanian language.

KEYWORDS: fairy tale, The Brothers Grimm, culture-bound words, contiguity, metonymy, equivalence, German language, Lithuanian language.

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Fairy-tale translations are examined. By comparing the original with the translations, three types of equivalence are identified: 1. Full equivalence, in which metonymy plays no role; 2. Equivalence involving conceptual shifts within the space of contiguity, which manifest themselves as metonymic shift, metonymic reversal, and metonymic distortion; 3. Zero equivalence, whose main characteristic is the incorporation of foreign words.

The article concludes with conclusions pointing to new possibilities for research into equivalence and conceptual metonymy.

ANNOTATION

The aim of the article is to connect the model of cognitive metonymy with the model of types of denotative equivalence on word level to check out the explanational potential of the model of cognitive metonymy for describing and explaining the use and occurance of word equivalents in the Lithuanian translations of the fairy tales of the Brothers’ Grimm by Juozas Balčikonis (1938–1939) and Adomas Druktenis (1999–2001). The Brothers’ Grimm fairy tales (GFT) can be seen in a wide sense as a source of the history of culture and social life in the German speaking countries of the 19th century.

Culture-bound words a) refer to a special cultural knowledge, which is in a historical sense not or not completely compatible with the structure of knowledge in our present days, and b) refer to a common cultural knowledge of the community of German speaking countries. The translations of the GFT present ways of handling of German culture-bound words for foreign readers. In this article I want to show, if and how the translators achieved a correct and appropriate understanding of the culture-bound words by choosing equivalents. This allows to show what semantic and cognitive procedures stand behind the use of certain equivalents. By comparing the German original with the two Lithuanian translations it is possible to work out if and how the culture-bound words of the original texts are rendered in the translations, and finally to inductively conclude how far the conceptual metonymy takes part in rendering of culture-bound words in the target texts. Investigating this, there can be established modifications in the theory of conceptual metonymy in the framework of cognitive linguistics.

INTRODUCTION: AIM, OBJECT OF STUDY, AND METHODS OF THE ARTICLE

The aim of this article is to establish connections with Werner Koller’s (2011) model of denotative equivalence types by drawing on considerations of conceptual metonymy, and thereby to examine the extent to which the potential of conceptual metonymy can be applied to the handling of German culture-specific terms in the Lithuanian translations of the Children’s and Household Tales and

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the Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Juozas Balčikonis and Adomas Pruktenis. The corpus under investigation is the Brothers Grimm’s collection of fairy tales, which has become known worldwide under the title Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM). Since its first publication in 1812, this collection has undergone several editions and printings, some of them substantially revised. In my research, I rely on the Ausgabe letzter Hand mit den Originalanmerkungen der Brüder Grimm of 1857, in a 2010 reprint containing the 200 canonized fairy tales. It follows that the KHM constitutes a closed corpus, which is advantageous for the intended research, since the content quality (in the sense of a cultural-historical and social-historical source) and the linguistic form of the fairy tales are closely tied to the period in which they were collected, committed to writing, and printed (1812–1857). Both Lithuanian translations are based on the Ausgabe letzter Hand, but chronological and editorial differences can be identified. Balčikonis’s translation was produced in 1938–1939, and Druktenis’s in 1999–2001. Twenty fairy tales are missing from the edition of Balčikonis’s translation (2010)¹; the edition of Druktenis’s translation (1999–2001) is complete.

The focus on culture-specific terms in the KHM is justified by the fact that these particular lexical units a) refer to cultural knowledge that, historically speaking, is no longer compatible with contemporary knowledge structures, and b) point to the general cultural knowledge of the German linguistic and cultural community. The Lithuanian equivalents used in the translations affect the availability of this culturally unfamiliar knowledge, distant in space and time, to Lithuanian readers. In general, the handling of culture-specific terms in translation is connected with the problem of lexical-semantic equivalence between two languages.

To achieve the stated aim—to test Koller’s model of equivalence types deductively through word analysis in the underlying fairy-tale texts—the vocabulary denoting cultural objects in the fairy-tale narratives is identified in the corpus, with the current and historical dictionaries of German serving as a basis for deciding whether a term is culture-specific, alongside, in particular, Franz Dorn-

¹ The following fairy tales are missing: no. 38 “The Wedding of Mrs Fox,” 39.2 “The Elves. Second Tale,” 39.3 “The Elves. Third Tale,” 41 “Herr Korbes,” 42 “Godfather Death,” 43 “Frau Trude,” 45 “The Wanderings of Tom Thumb,” 66 “The Hare’s Bride,” 95 “Old Hildebrand,” 105 “The Tale of the Toad,” 131 “The Pretty Katrinelje and Pif Paf Poltrie,” 132 “The Fox and the Horse,” 138 “Knoist and His Three Sons,” 139 “The Girl from Brakel,” 140 “The Household Servants,” 149 “The Rooster Beam,” 150 “The Old Beggar Woman,” 170 “Sharing Joy and Sorrow,” 183 “The Giant and the Tailor,” 190 “The Crumbs on the Table.”

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seiff serves to establish the taxonomy of subject matter concerning the scope and content of cultural knowledge². By comparing the German original with the two Lithuanian translations, it can ultimately be determined whether and how the realia designations in the original, together with their cultural references, were rendered in the translations, so that inductive conclusions can be drawn about the extent to which conceptual metonymy is involved in the handling of realia designations in translations. This ultimately opens up possibilities for modifying cognitive-linguistic approaches to conceptual metonymy.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

1. Fairy Tales

The fairy tale is considered an epic genre (also called a genre) and is characterized as a fantastical, reality-transcending, variable narrative, distinguishable from myth by the absence of the divine sphere and from legend by the absence of concrete historical and geographical references. The main characteristics generally attributed to the fairy tale are the absence of space and time, the suspension of the laws of nature and causality as a matter of course (e.g., transformations, speaking animals, plants, or objects), and the appearance of fabulous creatures such as giants, dwarves, witches, and dragons (cf. Metzler Literatur Lexikon 1990: 292). Nevertheless, fairy tales contain certain props, which may often be an essential part of the plot, but which are in any case objects belonging to the culture conveyed by the fairy tale (everyday, state and social, courtly culture, etc.) and thus provide evidence of historical authenticity. If one follows the view of fairy tales as sources for cultural and social history (cf. Metzler Literatur Lexikon 1990: 293), the KHM can be used, precisely through the appearance of these props, to develop ideas about past historical periods that can, in the broadest sense, be described as the Middle Ages. What is called props here comprises those historical cultural objects referred to by specific realia designations. Yet it must of course also be noted that the KHM form part of the general literary and linguistic heritage of the German linguistic and cultural community, and that numerous lexical units therefore also refer, as more general realia designations, to the broader cultural background.

² According to Franz Dornseiff’s classification (2004), these are subject groups 2 “Life”; 4 “Size, quantity, number”; 8 “Place and change of place”; 11 “Thinking”; 14 “Art and culture”; 15 “Living together”; 16 “Eating and drinking”; 18 “Society”; 19 “Tools, technology”; 20 “Economy, finance”; 21 “Law, ethics”; 22 “Religion, the supernatural.”

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2. Culture, Realia, Realia Designations

Drawing on Hansen’s newer, expanded concept of culture³, Haß-Zumkehr describes the concept of culture as follows:

It “goes beyond political and social factors and includes the value systems and orientations of social milieus, as well as their constructive character. Social groups do not merely ‘implement’ cultural orientations receptively; they also actively modify and transmit them.” (Haß-Zumkehr 2001: 2)

Cavagnoli similarly observes that language can be understood both as a product of a culture and as a mirror and medium of cultural conceptions; and that culture includes all behavioral patterns, values, and experiences (cf. Cavagnoli 2005: 79 f.). This “inclusion” or “encompassing” refers to what is known as background knowledge, which plays a significant role in shaping a linguistic and cultural community. Thus, knowledge cannot be conceived of without culture. And the transfer of knowledge through language, for example in translation, is in principle always also a transfer of culture⁴. Culture is “a multilayered system of meaningful signs that serve to help one find one’s way in a given world (...) This orienting function encompasses both existentially fundamental values and more everyday, practical conventions.” (Haß-Zumkehr 2001: 15)

This means: 1. Culture provides orientation—one must find one’s bearings within a culture. 2. Cultural knowledge is conventionalized and codified in a particular form within a linguistic and cultural community. 3. Culture, as a space of knowledge, has stable and interpretable components (cf. Haß-Zumkehr 2001: 16 f.). The culturally grounded background knowledge can be appropriately expressed in language in various ways, for example through definitions of different kinds in texts (including specialist texts), in bilingual and multilingual technical dictionaries and encyclopedias, and, in translation, through the use of codified equivalents or, where these are lacking, through procedures for creating equivalents.

Starting from this broad concept of culture, it is possible to understand not only objects, people’s actions, the properties/characteristics of objects, people, and actions, but also moral, aesthetic, volitional, and utilitarian concepts as parts of a culture.

Such a broad concept of culture logically leads to a broad understanding of the term realia. If one follows the general definition of realia

³ Bibliografische Angaben zu Hansen. s. Haß-Zumkehr (2001).

⁴ Dornseiff (1964: 305 f.) nannte dies „Kulturübertragung“, und zwar im Sinne einer „erfreulichen Bereicherung im Begriffsvorrat“ einer Zielsprache.

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als kulturspezifische Gegenstände und Handlungen (vgl. Nord 1993: 224) sowie als Identitätsträger einer nationalen/ethnischen Kultur im weitesten Sinne (vgl. Snell-Hornby et al. 1999: 288) folgt, wird zunächst klar,

“that realia as such and in fact belong to the body of knowledge of a linguistic and cultural community, are definable within this body of knowledge and are always communicatively available there; thus they can be referred to and invoked using the corresponding designations. Through this belonging to a linguistic and cultural community—which is occasionally exclusive—realia and their designations constitute a specific translation problem or, more generally, a language-mediation problem.” (Drößiger 2010: 36 f.)

In cases where dealing with designations of realia is necessary, Nord recommends providing an “explanatory translation” in order to offer indications of their “cultural embeddedness” in the source language (cf. Nord 1993: 226).

Put in cognitive-linguistic terms, however, the aim is to make the cultural knowledge of one linguistic and cultural community available to the mind of another and thereby communicable through language, without intending to durably modify the cultural knowledge system of the target language and culture. In the case of the KHM, this concerns the two types of cultural knowledge mentioned above.

Regardless of the various models for classifying realia⁵ and their designations, the simple narrative structure of fairy tales (cf. Kindlers neues Literatur-Lexikon 1996: 916) allows us to inductively identify certain categories of realia that correspond to the components of fairy-tale narration. These components are characters, setting, time, plot, props used by the characters, places, and actions.

The term “designation of realia” is an attempt to bring together linguistic and translation-studies approaches to this phenomenon. Designations of realia have thus been and continue to be described using, among others, the following terms: “foreign words” (H. Paul, W. Schmidt), “loan material” (W. Schmidt), “exotic designation” (T. Schip­pan, H. Glück), “country-specific realia” (W. Fleischer), “exoticisms” (Ch. Römer / B. Matzke), “realia word / designation of realia” (E. Riesel, Ch. Nord).⁶ The term designation of realia should be used in an overarching,

⁵ Eines der Modelle wäre das von Влахов/Флорин (s. 2009: 49–72), auf das aber hier aus Platzgründen nicht eingegangen werden kann. Ebenso geeignet sind systematische Darstellungen des Wortschatzes, wie sie für das Deutsche in Gestalt von systematischen Wörterbüchern, z. B. von Dornseiff Der deutsche Wortschatz nach Sachgruppen, entwickelt wurden.

⁶ For detailed explanations of the concept of designations of realia and specific references to sources, I refer readers to Drößiger (2010: 36–52), where I presented approaches from various disciplines of linguistics and translation studies.

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general sense, without introducing the criterion of “foreignness,” which is very often used as a descriptive criterion in lexicology and stylistics, since doing so makes a connection with genealogical language research possible—a field that emphasizes the similarities between Indo-European linguistic and cultural communities more strongly than the differences between them.

3. Types of Equivalence and Metonymy

Die Systematik der denotativen Äquivalenztypen nach Koller (s. 2011: 230–243) orientiert sich an den Äquivalenzbeziehungen zwischen den Lexemen zweier Sprachen (vgl. Koller 2011: 230), so dass die Anwendung dieser Systematik auf die Handhabung von Realienbezeichnungen im Rahmen von Übersetzungen sinnvoll erscheint. Eine gewisse Analogie zwischen den Äquivalenztypen nach Koller und den Auffassungen zur Metonymie (eine Übersicht hierzu s. Drößiger 2004: 30) führt zu der Schlussfolgerung, dass das Potenzial der Metonymie (des Kontiguitätsraumes) bei der Suche nach Äquivalenten für bestimmte Bezeichnungen der Ausgangssprache (AS) in einer Zielsprache (ZS) angewendet werden kann. Die folgende Übersicht verdeutlicht die gemeinte Analogie:

TABLE 1. Types of Equivalence and Metonymy (Source: author of the article)

Type of equivalence (according to Koller) | Types of metonymy / shifts within the contiguity domain One-to-one correspondence | No metonymy is possible or necessary, since the source language and target language have semantically equivalent designations; this also includes connotative and pragmatic equivalence, e.g. German Ungeheuer > Lithuanian siaubūnas⁷ One-to-many correspondence | The target language uses different lexemes from a particular contiguity domain, for which the source language has a polysemous lexeme, e.g. German Frau > Lithuanian moteris (basic meaning, in opposition to “man”), žmona (wife, married woman), šeimininkė (housewife, hostess), ponia (form of address). Many-to-one correspondence | Several source-language lexemes represent a section of a contiguity domain, while a hyperonymic lexeme is used in the target language, e.g. German Kammer, Stube, Zimmer > Lithuanian kambarys.

⁷ All examples listed are taken from the KHM (German original and Lithuanian translations).

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Equivalence type (according to Koller)

Types of metonymy / shifts within the space of contiguity

One-to-zero correspondence

There is no equivalent in the TL for a SL lexeme, although the meaning of the SL lexeme can be referred to in the TL by means of other naming procedures, e.g. German ein rechtes Höllenfeuer > Lithuanian baisiai prikūrenta. In cases of this kind, for example, a metonymic relation of the cause-effect type can be observed.

One-to-part correspondence

For a SL lexeme, a lexeme is used as its equivalent in the TL that refers only to part of the meaning of the SL lexeme, which generally corresponds to the metonymic whole-part relation, e.g. German Keller > Lithuanian pogrindis.

The uniqueness of certain realia and their designations within a linguistic and cultural community often compels the translator to seek ways of dealing with German realia designations appropriately and with due regard for the addressee (cf. Drößiger 2011: 7 f.; Drößiger 2012: 8 f.). This also concerns the possibilities offered by metonymy, since the individual procedures mentioned above do not make it possible to represent theoretically all the metonymic types actually used in translated texts. The reason lies in the nature of metonymy, since “metonymy (or contiguity) is also a process that allows speakers/writers to modify given knowledge (...) in a partly creative way”: (Drößiger 2007: 175)

At times, the translator goes too far in this regard, i.e. the shift within the space of contiguity is taken too far, so that the balance between factual appropriateness and appropriateness to the addressee is upset. This means that it is no longer possible to speak of a “shift” in the usual sense (see below, section on metonymic distortion).

REALIA DESIGNATIONS IN THE KHM: BETWEEN EQUIVALENCE AND METONYMY

Knowledge about the foundations of everyday life in social communities, about the cultural, economic, intellectual, and social potential of nature, and about mastering existence through work and spiritual

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activities is indeed expressed in language-specific lexical units, but constitutes shared knowledge across large geographical areas, so that, using the broad definition of culture mentioned above, it can be postulated that every Indo-European linguistic and cultural community has developed its own vocabulary for designating the general components of the cultural background.

I. COMPLETE EQUIVALENCE – NO METONYMY

A comparison of the translations of the KHM into Lithuanian with the German original shows that in these two languages basic words are available for designating those everyday cultural objects which, to a significant extent, do not derive from a shared Indo-European basic vocabulary from which they would have developed in language-specific ways; rather, each language has developed its own word stems and—depending on the morphological characteristics of the language in question—basic words. The result is fully equivalent lexemes in these languages, whose use in translations poses no problems, since they are appropriate both in terms of subject matter and for the intended readership.

TABLE 2. Fully equivalent realia designations (Source: Author of the contribution)

GERMAN LITHUANIAN GERMAN LITHUANIAN Axe kirvis Needle adata Broom šluota Stove krosnis Bread duona Castle dvaras, pilis Yarn siūlai Rope virvė Bell varpas Living room pirkia Hearth židinys Cradle lopšys Yard kiemas Widow našlė Chest skrynia Thread siūlas

Some examples may be regarded as borrowings from German into Lithuanian owing to particular historical circumstances:

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TABLE 3. Borrowings from German (Source: author of the article)

GERMAN⁸

>

LITHUANIAN⁹

GERMAN

>

LITHUANIAN

Count

>

count

Wheel

>

wheel

Duke

>

duke

frame

>

frame

chalk

>

chalk

hall

>

hall

lot

>

litas

And of course, examples can be found among the basic words that point to shared borrowings from other, mostly older Indo-European languages, so that in such cases one can probably indeed speak of inherited Indo-European vocabulary:

TABLE 4. Indo-European inherited vocabulary (Source: author of the article)

GERMAN

LITHUANIAN

GERMAN

LITHUANIAN

oak

oak

pipe

pipe

chamber

room

daughter

daughter / daughter

cauldron

cauldron

door

door

crown

crown

Sugar

sugar

Only more recent German realia designations, and especially words formed through word formation—usually compounding—pose problems in the course of translation. These can be solved only if comparable (equivalent) circumstances can be found in the language of the target culture, pointing to commonalities in the cultural development (crafts, forms of rule, everyday objects, construction, means of transport, etc.) of different linguistic and cultural communities. The following are some examples from the KHM relating to the subject area of clothing:

⁸ Although a possible borrowing of Kreide and Graf from Medieval or Vulgar Latin into Germanic languages is assumed, it seems to me that the spread of these words in the Germanic languages, together with their semantic change toward the meaning current to this day and the geographical proximity of the Germanic and Baltic linguistic areas, provides a valid rationale for their borrowing into Lithuanian—if not exclusively from German, then at least from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.

⁹ Evidence for Lithuanian vocabulary is found only in the rarest cases in the Lietuvių kalbos žodynas (LKŽ). The Deutsches Wörterbuch (DWB) by the Brothers Grimm (cf. http://dwb.uni-trier.de/de/ [2013-02-27]) and the Duden. Herkunftswörterbuch; bibliographic details are given in the bibliography.

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TABLE 5. Lithuanian equivalents for German compounds (Source: author of the contribution)

GERMAN LITHUANIAN GERMAN LITHUANIAN merchant’s clothes clothing of merchants fur coat fur jacket wedding shirt wedding shirt wooden shoes wooden clogs ragged coat skarnalái Bratenrock coat

However, it should be noted that in the case of Bratenrock¹⁰, elements of the term are missing or have been lost in the Lithuanian translation, since the Lithuanian lexeme apsiaustas denotes a coat or overcoat in general.

II. METONYMIC EQUIVALENCE – MOVEMENTS IN THE SPACE OF CONTIGUITY

The Lithuanian translations of the KHM show that the meanings of German culture-specific designations were not always rendered equivalently (apart from incorrect or missing lexemes in the translations). These cases of metonymic equivalence in the Lithuanian designations used, which entail the loss of source-language culture-bound knowledge and thus seem appropriate for the addressee but no longer accurate, can be divided into the following types.

1. Metonymic shift

In the example cited above, Bratenrock, the designation chosen in the Lithuanian translation exhibits this type of metonymy when the Lithuanian text uses apsiaustas, a hypernym for this kind of garment, instead of the more precise German lexeme, which carries particular social and usage-related connotations.

The hypernyms used in the Lithuanian text cause connotations (e.g., the pejorative sense of German Wanst) or references to more specific concepts, such as varieties and types, of the kind very often found in German in the first constituent

¹⁰ A Bratenrock was a garment for men, worn especially on formal occasions in the 19th century; it was also called a Gehrock. According to DUW, the designation Bratenrock contains an “obsolete, jocular” component.

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of determinative compounds, are lost. I call this first type metonymic shift; in the translations, the designation of a superordinate term present in the space of contiguity is used. Further examples of this first type from the translations of the KHM into Lithuanian are¹¹:

T A B L E 6. Metonymic shift (Source: Author of the article)

GERMAN

LITHUANIAN

Wanst

pilvas

Windhund

šuo [only in Balčikonis]

Schlafgemach

kambarys [only in Balčikonis]

oven

stove

back door, house door, gate

door

Bratwurst

sausage

2. Metonymic distortion

I call a second type of metonymic equivalence metonymic distortion, a category that can encompass the phenomena described in traditional research on metonymy as movement within a domain of contiguity, in the sense of object – activity involving the object, cause – effect, whole – objective properties / parts of the whole, and so on.

The following individual cases from the KHM and the lexemes encountered as “equivalents” in the Lithuanian translations exemplify this metonymic distortion, although it is not always possible to determine unambiguously why the translator chose to use such metonymic distortions.

• KHM 1: German “(...) so she took a golden ball, threw it into the air and caught it again; and this was her favorite plaything¹² > Lithuanian “(...) having taken a golden ball, she played.” (Balčikonis) – Here the metonymic distortion occurs between object and action involving the object, since žaisti is a verb corresponding to the German spielen.

¹¹ Some of these examples do occur as isolated cases, but this is precisely what makes them interesting for distinguishing between cases. For instance, Balčikonis also rendered Hintertür as užpakalinės durys.

¹² The orthography and punctuation of the cited edition of the KHM do not always conform to the rules customary today. The realia designation is italicized by the author of the article.

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• KHM 11: German “It happened that the king of the land held a great hunt in the forest.” > Lithuanian “Once the king of that country hunted.” (Balčikonis) – The metonymic distortion here occurs between an event and an action within the event, since the Lithuanian verb medžioti corresponds to the German verb jagen.

• KHM 5: German “Then the wolf went off to a peddler and bought himself a large piece of chalk.” > Lithuanian “Then the wolf ran to a shop and bought a large piece of chalk (...)” (Balčikonis) – The metonymic distortion here concerns the relationship between a person and the place where that person acts, since krautuvė is the Lithuanian equivalent of (Kram)Laden.

• KHM 6: German “(...) takes out the firearm that must be stuck in the holsters (...)” > Lithuanian “(...) would take out the pistol that would be tucked behind the bridle (...)” (Balčikonis) – The metonymic distortion here shifts from one co-hyponym to another under the same hyperonym, firearm.

• KHM 25: German “The Morning Star got up, gave her a little chicken leg and said, ‘if you don’t have the little leg¹³, you cannot unlock the Glass Mountain (...)’” > Lithuanian “And the Morning Star stood up, gave her a little key and said: ‘If you don’t have that little key, you won’t be able to unlock the Glass Mountain (...)’” (Balčikonis) – The metonymic distortion here occurs between an object and its function.

• KHM 14: German “When the festivities began, the three maidens entered in curious attire (...)” > Lithuanian “When the festivities began, three oddly dressed women entered the hall (...)” (Balčikonis) – The metonymic distortion goes beyond an acceptable generalization in Lithuanian, because the conceptual components to which the German word Jungfer refers¹⁴ have been lost in the translation, since Lithuanian moteriškė refers to an adult woman.

3. Metonymic distortion

I call the third type of metonymic equivalence metonymic distortion; it occurs whenever movement within the space of contiguity has been carried so far that essential semantic components of the original-

¹³ DWB: “hinkel, n. young chicken (...)” (http://woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/genFOplus.tcl?sigle=DWB&lemid=GH09066 [2013-07-08]). Hinkelbeinchen is therefore the term for the leg of a young chicken.

¹⁴ DWB: “2) jungfer, starting from the concept of the young mistress (...), in contrast to the older woman, the actual mistress of the household, initially denotes the unmarried daughter of the household, then any unmarried woman, as an honorific term, where today we would use the full maiden or, if more emphasis is to be placed on a title (cf. 3) (...)” (http://woerterbuchnetz.de/DWB/?sigle=DWB&mode=Vernetzung&lemid=GJ01376 [2012-12-10])

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lexemes appear to have been eliminated, as a result of which an appropriate reference to the object and thus the transmission of knowledge can no longer be achieved. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations are the consequence. The translator’s decision to use designations that distort meaning in this way cannot always be plausibly explained, especially since appropriate equivalents are indeed available in the target language, Lithuanian.

Some examples:

KHM 2: German “(...) I have been asked to be godparent by my cousin (...)” > Lithuanian “(...) my friend is inviting me to a christening (...)” (Balčikonis) – The choice of draugė (literally: “female friend”) removes the kinship component of the concept; the correct equivalent would be Lithuanian pusseserė.

KHM 4: German “’I’ll soon get you,’ said the monster” > Lithuanian “’I’ll teach you a lesson,’ said the long-bearded man.” (Balčikonis) – The components of danger and evil are lost with the Lithuanian ilgabarzdis (literally: “the long-bearded one”); the correct equivalent would be Lithuanian pabaisa, which the translator used elsewhere in the KHM.

KHM 6: German “Then she cried, ‘Oh, what beautiful golden things!’” > Lithuanian “’Oh, what beautiful things!’ she cried (...)” (Balčikonis) – The material specification and the conception of gold’s value are lost, because the Lithuanian designation (literally “beautiful things”) does indicate that golden things are probably beautiful, but not every beautiful thing is made of gold; an appropriate Lithuanian equivalent would be aukso daiktai.

KHM 9: German “(...) said to the king, ‘It is a common beggar girl, whom you have brought home with you (...)’” > Lithuanian “(...) saying to her son: ‘You married a beggar’s daughter (...)’” (Balčikonis). In the literal sense, this refers to the “daughter of a beggar,” but this is a metonymic distortion, since the text per se does not say that the girl in question is actually the daughter of a beggar, only that outwardly she appears to be a beggar.

III. ZERO EQUIVALENCE – INCORPORATION OF FOREIGN WORDS

Making the cultural knowledge of another linguistic and cultural community available to one’s own is very often achieved through the direct adoption of particular lexemes, since no equivalents ascertainable in terms of linguistic genealogy exist in the target-language culture. In translations of the KHM, these are Germanisms, which in the target-language

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were incorporated into the text without further syntactic-semantic connections such as explication, paraphrase, or the like. Particularly in the categories of persons and measures / quantities / coins, these designations of realia appear as “established” foreign words, morphologically—and sometimes also phonetically-phonologically—incorporated into the TL:

T A B L E 7. Adoption of foreign words into Lithuanian (Source: author of the article)

GERMAN

LITHUANIAN

GERMAN

LITHUANIAN

Taler

taleris

Duke

hercogas

Baron

baronas

Mauschel

maūšelis

Count

grafas

However, there is no uniformity in how these are handled, since not all coin names are adopted as Germanisms; Taler is apparently an exception due to its greater familiarity. Coin names that are not adopted are Batzen (KHM 15) and Heller (KHM 4), for which hyperonyms are used in the Lithuanian text in keeping with metonymic shift, e.g., German Batzen > Lithuanian pinigėliai; German Scheidemünze > Lithuanian smulkiai.

CONCLUSIONS

The documentation and description of realia designations in the KHM contribute not only to a better understanding of certain details in the fairy tales, but also to reconstructing the knowledge conveyed by the tales, enabling comparisons with current knowledge about everyday things, social relations, and so on. In this sense, the fairy tales can indeed be regarded as a sociohistorical and cultural-historical source. This, however, requires a broad concept of culture and a broad understanding of realia and their designations. These two prerequisites necessarily lead to a systematic analysis of realia designations in the KHM, encompassing not only those that are especially striking because they contrast sharply with our contemporary culture, but also those that refer to the foundations of our largely shared European culture.

From a linguistic perspective, it has been shown that a translation-studies model of equivalence relating to vocabulary, such as Koller’s, can be combined with lexical-semantic or cognitive-linguistic categories such as met-

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onymy to better capture and describe the treatment of particular areas of vocabulary in translation. Such combinations give rise to changes in the respective theoretical constructs; for example, a translation-studies lexical equivalence model can be simplified to three types of equivalence: (1) complete equivalence, (2) metonymic equivalence as movements within the space of contiguity, and (3) zero equivalence, which may necessitate the adoption of a foreign word.

Cognitive-linguistic theoretical approaches to metonymy should also be reconsidered and revised, since the distinction between metonymic shifts, reversals, and distortions shows that the structure and processes of the space of contiguity need further investigation in order to develop better accounts of human knowledge in general.

QUELLEN

B r o l i a i G r i m a i 1999–2001: Vaikų ir namų pasakos 1–4. Iš vokiečių kalbos vertė Adomas Pranas Druktenis. Vilnius: Alma littera.

Brolių Grimų Pasakos 1–2. 2010. Iš vokiečių kalbos vertė Juozas Balčikonis [Original der Übersetzung: 1938–1939]. Kaunas: Vaiga.

G r i m m J a c o b, G r i m m W i l h e l m 2010: Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Ausgabe letzter Hand mit den Originalanmerkungen der Brüder Grimm. Mit einem Anhang sämtlicher, nicht in allen Auflagen veröffentlichter Märchen und Herkunftsnachweisen hrsg. von Heinz Rölleke. 3 Bde. [Original: 1857] [= KHM]. Stuttgart: Reclam.

FACHLITERATUR

C a v a g n o l i S t e f a n i a 2005: Vom Paradigma zur Umsetzung: Das Bozner Modell. – Wissenstransfer durch Sprache als gesellschaftliches Problem, hrsg. von Gerd Antos, Sigurd Wichter. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 77–89.

D o r n s e i f f F r a n z 1964: Sprache und Sprechender, hrsg. von Jürgen Werner. Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang.

D r ö ß i g e r H a n s-H a r r y 2004: Bemerkungen zur kommunikativen und kognitiven Charakteristik der Metonymie im Deutschen. – Kalbų studijos 5, 30–40.

D r ö ß i g e r H a n s-H a r r y 2007: Metaphorik und Metonymie im Deutschen. Untersuchungen zum Diskurspotenzial semantisch-kognitiver Räume. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač.

D r ö ß i g e r H a n s-H a r r y 2010: Zum Begriff und zu Problemen der Realien und ihrer Bezeichnungen. – Vertimo studijos 3, 36–52.

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Drößiger Hans-Harry 2011: Terminologie in Theorie und Praxis unter dem besonderen Aspekt der interkulturellen Kommunikation. – Inostrannye jazyki v vys ej kole 2(17), 5–13.

Drößiger Hans-Harry 2012: Realien, ihre Bezeichnungen und Aspekte der Interkulturalität. – Kalbų studijos 20, 5–11.

Haß-Zumkehr Ulrike 2001: Deutsche Wörterbücher – Brennpunkt von Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

Kindlers neues Literatur-Lexikon 1996: Bd. 6. Hrsg. von Walter Jens. München: Kindler.

Koller Werner 2011: Einführung in die Übersetzungswissenschaft. 8., neubearbeitete Auflage. Tübingen: Francke.

Metzler Literatur Lexikon 1990: Hrsg. von Günther und Irmgard Schweikle. 2., überarbeitete Auflage. Stuttgart: Metzler.

Nord Christiane 1993: Einführung in das funktionale Übersetzen. Tübingen, Basel: Francke.

Snell-Hornby M., Hönig H. G., Kußmaul P., Schmitt P. A. (Hrsg.) 1999: Handbuch Translation. 2., verbesserte Auflage. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

Влахов Сергей, Флорин Сидер 2009: Непереводимое в переводе. Москва: Р. Валент.

WÖRTERBÜCHER

Dornseiff Franz 2004: Der deutsche Wortschatz nach Sachgruppen. 8., völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage von Uwe Quasthoff. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch 2005: 3., völlig neu bearbeitete und erweiterte Auflage (CD-ROM). Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut & F. A. Brockhaus AG.

Duden. Deutsches Universalwörterbuch 2006: 6., überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage (CD-ROM) [= DUW]. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut & F. A. Brockhaus AG.

Grimm Jacob, Grimm Wilhelm 1998–2004: Deutsches Wörterbuch. [Original: 1852–1960] [= DWB]. URL: http://www.dwb.uni-trier.de/ [2013.02.22.]

Lietuvių kalbos žodynas, elektroninis variantas, redaktorių kolegija: Gertrūda Naktinienė (vyr. red.), Jonas Paulauskas, Rიტutė Petrokienė, Vytautas Vitkauskas, Jolanta Zabarskaitė. Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2008. Prieiga internete: www.lkz.lt. [2013.02.22].

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Vokiškų realijų pavadinimų atitikmenys Brolių Grimų Vaikų ir namų pasakų vertimuose į lietuvių kalbą

SANTRAUKA

Šio straipsnio tikslas – remiantis rinktiniais pavyzdžiais apžvelgti vokiškų realijų pavadinimų atitikmenų vartojimą Juozo Balčikonio ir Adomo Prano Druktenio į lietuvių kalbą verstose brolių Grimų Vaikų ir namų pasakose. Vartojant realijų pavadinimų atitikmenis, didelis vaidmuo tenka metonimijai. Metonimija gali būti sąmoningai pavartota ieškant atitikmens, antra vertus, metonimija gali tapti išeitimi, kai atitikmenų lietuvių kalboje nėra.

Dalis brolių Grimų pasakose esančių realijų pavadinimų ypatingi tuo, kad žymi informaciją, nebeatitinkančią šiuolaikinio žmogaus žinių. Taigi nuo lietuviškų atitikmenų parinkimo priklauso tai, kaip lietuvis skaitytojas supras šį jam erdvės ir laiko atžvilgiu svetimą kultūrinį pasaulį. Atitikmens parinkimas susijęs su bet kurių dviejų kalbų leksinės-semantinės ekvivalencijos problema. Pasitelkiant lietuviškus atitikmenis straipsnyje įvertinami Wernerio Kollerio (2011) atitikmenų tipai.

Įteikta 2013 m. liepos 5 d.

HANS-HARRY DRÖBIGER

Vilniaus universitetas, Kauno humanitarinis fakultetas

Muitinės g. 8, LT-44280 Kaunas, Lietuva

[email protected]

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