PECULIARITIES OF TRANSLATING LYUBOV YAKYMCHUK’S WAR POETRY INTO ENGLISH

Abstract

The article studies the peculiarities and difficulties of translating Ukrainian war poetry into English using the example of one of the famous works by the modern Ukrainian poet Lyubov Yakymchuk. The problem of artistic translation and poetry translation, in particular, is outlined as a particularly complex type. The peculiarities of war poetry, which should be taken into account during translation, are revealed. A brief description of the creative path of Lyubov Yakymchuk, the themes and stylistic features of her works included in her collection “Apricots of Donbas" published in English translation in 2021 is given. It is noted that the main difficulty of translating poems from this collection into English at the formal level is the so-called “deconstruction” of words and expressions (change of emphasis, substitution of letters, splitting of words into components), which is graphically expressed in writing. In this way, the poet intends to clearly show the devastating consequences of war for both a person and their environment. This strategy marks continuity with the Ukrainian Futurist movement of the 1920s. At the content level, the main features are deep inner experiences, conveyed with the help of an expressionistic style of writing, namely, a vivid expression of feelings; disclosure of the theme of the tragedy of human destiny; deformation and deconstruction of the world; the dominance of motives of death, war and loneliness; symbolism; irrationality; contrast of light and shadow, etc. The English translation of the poem "Prayer", which Lyubov Yakymchuk read at last year's world-famous Grammy Awards ceremony, has been analyzed. It is noted that this poetry thematically belongs to the category of prayer request and is a kind of the author's reinterpretation of the prayer "Our Father". The features of the reproduction of the form and content of this poem in English by translators Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochynsky are revealed. It is proved that thanks to the appropriate translation transformations used in the translation of this poetry, both the structure and the form of the poem have been preserved (almost every line in terms of the number of lexical units and rhythm accurately reproduces the original, without losing the content), as well as the sense, with the addition of important nuances of meaning to certain words, which indicates a high level of translation adequacy and equivalence.