TRANSLATION ASSESSMENT AND CRITICISM OF THE

TRANSLATION OF “THE MAN OF PROPERTY”, BOOK

ONE OF “THE FORSYTE SAGA”, TRANSLATED BY

VEDAT KOKONA

By

Erjona Pica

A Thesis Submitted in

Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Science

In Translation and Conference Interpreting

At

University of Tirana

Faculty of Foreign Languages

English Department

2010-2012

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge and extend my heartfelt gratitude to Professor Viktor Ristani, for

the constant encouragement, support and much needed motivation during the academic years,

and also for assisting me in writing this thesis.

Special thanks to the following professors who taught us and shared their personal experiences

with us: R. Xhillari, O. Hakani, Sh. Rira, R. Cincotta, etc.

Most especially, a huge THANKS to my family, for all the sacrifices and support during all these

academic years; and for all their attention, love, support and encouragement during my life.

Also I would like to thank the librarian of Durrës Library for her help in finding books and the

necessary materials and informations.

By: Erjona Pica Mentor: Viktor Ristani

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Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 5

Chapter 1

1.1 John Galsworthy’s life and education …………………………………………………7

1.2 Career as a dramatic writer and as one of the three

Eminent Edwardian Novelists…………………………………………………………8

1.3 Literary works and Importance of his works……………………………………….10

1.4 Criticism and contributions to the Modern Drama…………………………………11

Chapter 2

2.1 Vedat Kokona’s life and education ………………………………………………12

2.2 Career as a translator and his translations ………………………………………13

2.3 Contributions to the Albanian Literature and criticism ………………………..14

Chapter 3

3.1 The social, economic and historical background of England

during the time the book was written …………………………………………………….15

3.2 History of the first book of The Forsyte Saga, Book 1, “The Man of Property”. …….16

3.3 Author’s style ……………………………………………………………………………18

Chapter 4

4.1 Translation Assessment of “The Forsyte Saga”, “The Man of Property”………………..20

- Preservation of the author’s style

- Omissions and additions

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- Stylemes, key words, exposition and dialogue (Colloquialisms)

- Epithets and metaphors

4.2 Nature in “The Forsyte Saga” and Parallel Constructions ……………………………36

4.3 Paganism in the novel …………………………………………………………………….41

4.4 Allusions, idioms and similies …………………………………………………………….50

Chapter 5

5.1 Principles of Correspondence..............................................................................................56

5.2 Translation as the Trial of the foreign…………………………………………………….58

Conslusions …………………………………………………………………………………….61

Bibliography 63

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ABSTRACT

TRANSLATION ASSESSMENT AND CRITICISM OF THE

TRANSLATION OF “THE MAN OF PROPERTY”, BOOK

ONE OF “THE FORSYTE SAGA”, TRANSLATED BY

VEDAT KOKONA

By

Erjona Pica

Faculty of Foreign Languages, English Department, 2012

Under the Supervision of Professor Viktor Ristani

“Sufficient unto this Earth is the beauty and the meaning thereof.”1

(John Galsworthy)

The translation of a novel can and must communicate the basic elements of narrative form that

structure the foreign-language text, but it is still not true that these elements are not free from

variation. Our country nowadays lacks translations of a good quality, lacks good translators but

also lacks a literary criticism on the translated works. One of the critical issues of translation

assessment is a lack of systematic criteria that can be used universally to assess translations. This

presents an enormous challenge in assessing a translation and providing a constructive, detailed

feedback, for the area of translation assessment has been under-research and regarded as a

problematic area primarily due to “its subjective nature”.

1 John Galsworthy, “The Great Tree”, in Forsytes, Pendyces and Others, New York, Scribners, 1936, p. 332.

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In this thesis I have made a thorough analysis, an assessment of the translated version of “The

man of Property”, which is the Book 1 of “The Forsyte Saga”.

In the first chapter we will be introduced to John Galsworthy’s life and education, will know

more about his literary works, his contributions to the Modern drama, criticism and the

importance of his works.

In the second chapter I talked about the translator, about his life, education and career, and his

translations, the books he wrote and his contributions.

The third chapter includes the social, economic and historic background of England during the

period the book was written. In order to understand the plot, the characters, their inner feelings

and their reactions in different situations was important to know about England’s social

background, but also about the book’s history. Analysing the Author’s style, on chapter 3, was

very helpful in understanding how was the novel is constructed, how the characters are depicted,

etc. it was necessary for the next step. What I was concerned with was the way the translator had

translated the novel; how faithfully he rendered the message of the novel; whether he preserved

the author’s style; if the reader of the target text has been offered a translation that would make it

possible to perceive the novel same as the reader of the source text, without loosing the chance of

reading a translation that would totally grasp their attention same as the original had the source

text readers’ attention; if we encounter embellishment in the translated version or

impoverishment, or neither of the two if the translator was as good as to translate it masterfully.

In the following chapter all the figures of speech are taken into consideration. It is made a

thorough analysis to synonyms, metaphors, epithets, allusions, repetitions, idioms, etc.

Beside all these figures of speech and stylistic devices usend in the source text, I put their version

of the target text, in order to see the differences and similarities. Not only did I analyze how the

translation was performed, but also there are provided many examples and arguments for to

ecplain the conclusions I draw from the study of those stylistic devices.

In the last chapter I preferred to discuss about the principles of correspondence and about

translation in general as the trial of the foreign. Translating a work of art is not an easy task; the

translator always encounters uncountable difficulties, but the ability to obercome these

difficulties and to find a solution always depends upon the translator.

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Chapter 1

1.1 John Galsworthy’s life and education

Galsworthy was born on a family estate in Kingston Hill, Surrey, near London. His mother

was a descendant of provincial squires, while his father was of Devonshire yeoman stock. His

father was a successful solicitor who had financial interests in mining companies in Canada and

Russia, and who later served as the model for Old Jolyon Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga.

At the age of nine, Galsworthy was sent to a boarding school and later to the prestigious Harrow

School in London, where he excelled in athletics and gained fame as a cricket and football

player. In 1886 he enrolled at Oxford to study law, graduating with second degree honors in

1889. The following year he was admitted to the bar. He left for Canada in 1891 to inspect his

family’s mining interests and travelled extensively thereafter.

In 1893, Galsworthy met the writer Joseph Conrad while on a South Sea voyage, aboard the

Torrens, which he made in part to study maritime law. In a letter he noted: : "The first mate is a

Pole called Conrad, and is a capital chap though queer to look at; he is a man of travel and

experience in many parts of the world, and has a fund of yarns on which I draw freely." This

meeting convinced Galsworthy to give up law and devote himself entirely to writing. Years later

Galsworthy helped Conrad financially.

After his father’s death in 1904, Galsworthy became financially independent and could devote

himself for a period to the sports of shooting and racing. “I gave up shooting because it got on

my nerves”, Galsworthy later said.

In 1905 he married Ada Person Cooper. Galsworthy had lived in secret with her for ten years,

because he did not want to cause distress to his father, who would not approve the relationship.

Ada Person inspired many of Galsworthy’s female characters. Her previous unhappy marriage

with Galsworthy’s cousin formed the basis for the novel “The Man of Property” (1906), which

began the novel sequence to be known as “The Forsyte Saga” and established Galsworthy’s

reputation as a major British writer.

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1.2 Career as a dramatic writer and as one of the three eminent Edwardian Novelists

The literary career of John Galsworthy may be said to have had its beginning in front of the

railway bookstall at the Paris Gare du Nord in the Easter week of 1895. For it was there, in the

course of a conversation with the lady who was later to become his wife, that she suggested to

him that he ought to write, since he had all the makings of a literary artist2 .

John Galsworthy was twenty-eight at the time he began to think of writing, and until then had

led the ordinary normal life of a young man coming from a sound upper middle-class family. Ha

had been at Harrow and Oxford, and had done all the correct things in the way of games and

sport that correct young men of the upper, middle-class English families usually do. He had been

an eminently satisfactory student, a little serious-minded perhaps, and with a high sense of

responsibility3, but there had been no marked brilliancy to single him out among his fellows and

to give rise to uneasy qualms in the minds of his superiors.

Galsworthy was a dramatist of considerable technical skill. Galsworthy's favorite authors

were Thackeray, Dickens, and Melville, his favorite composer was Beethoven. He is one of the

three eminent Edwardian Novelists, the others being H.G.Wells and Arnold Bennet. They grew

up when socialism was gaining ground among the elite and when the Russian writers with leftist

orientation were the most dominant influence. Although sympathetic to his characters, he

highlights their insular, snobbish, and acquisitive attitudes and their suffocating moral codes.

He is viewed as one of the first writers of the Edwardian Era who challenged some of the

ideals of society depicted in the preceding literature of the Victorian England. Through his

writings he campaigned for a variety of causes, including prison reform, women’s rights, animal

welfare, and the opposition of censorship.

2 See Marrot; “The Life and Letters of John Galsworthy”(p.101): «It was at the Gare du Nord in Easter Week 1895,

before a bookstall, where he was seeing Ada and her mother off, Ada asked “Why don’t you write? You’re just the

person”. » 3 Marrot, having described the days at Harrow (p.37-47), proceeds to draw a portrait of Galsworthy as an Oxford

student (pp.59-67), silent reserved, rather superior, even slightly cynical, the man of a small circle, gifted with a

sense of humor; in fact (pp.59-60) : «succinctly outlined in the opening lines of A Sad Affair : “ An amiable youth

of fair scholarship and athletic attainments, and more susceptible to emotions, aesthetic and otherwise, than most

young barbarians, he went up a little intoxicated on the novels of Whyte Melville. From continually reading about

whiskered dandies, garbed to perfection and imperturbably stoical in the trying circumstances of debt and

discomfiture, he had come to the conclusion that to be whiskered and unmoved by fortune was quite the ultimate

hope of existence. There was something not altogether ignoble at the back of this creed”. »

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The speed with which John Galsworthy climbed from the vale of obscurity to the heights of

fame is more than a tribute to his ability; it is a proof that popular taste is better than those who

form it seem to think.

His novels and his plays have no tricks; the deserts of his tragedies have no springs of laughter;

even on stage he usually appeals more to reason than to sentiment; his vitality is the vitality of

the mind rather of the passions; he seems to think that the drama is an art, not a trade.

Nor was his reputation made by one novel, or one play, or one lucky hit. It was made by a rapid

succession of masterpieces. Although his rise from obscurity to fame was rapid, he spent sixteen

years—from the age of twenty-three to the age of thirty-nine—in more or less unconscious

preparation for his career.

John Galsworthy has written that:

“A Drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping of life and character

has its inherent moral; and the business of the dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that

moral poignantly to the light of day. . . . The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere

art, denying itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to the mere machinery of the play,

suppressing all jokes and epigrams severed from character, relying for fun and pathos on the

fun and tears of life. From start to finish good dialogue is hand-made, like good lace; clear, of

fine texture, furthering with each thread the harmony and strength of a design to which all must

be subordinated . . . the question of naturalistic technique will bear, indeed, much more study

than has yet been given it. The aim of the dramatist employing it is evidently to create such an

illusion of actual life passing on the stage as to compel the spectator to pass through an

experience of his own, to think and talk and move with the people he sees thinking, talking and

moving in front of him…A good plot is that sure edifice which rises out of the interplay of

circumstances on temperament or of temperament on circumstance, within the enclosing

atmosphere of an idea.” In later years his own advice to aspiring authors was emphatically that

they should not begin to write too young –live first, then write4.

4 In 1924, Galsworthy having reviewed, in “The Triad”, the years of his life from 1895 to 1905, concludes that even

at twenty-eight he was too young to begin writing: “To begin young is a mistake. Live first, write afterwards”.

Again and again insisted upon it. «John Galsworthy; le Romancier », by Ed. Guyot (Paris, 1933), pp 162 and

following.

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1.3 Literary works and Importance of his works

His plays often took up specific social grievances such as the double standard of justice as

applied to the upper and lower classes in The Silver Box (1906) and the confrontation of capital

and labour in Strife (1909).

Galsworthy’s first for books were published at his own expense under the pseudonym John

Signjohn, the first being a collection of short stories, “From the Four Winds” (1897). After

reading Maupassant and Turgenev, Galsworthy published “Villa Rubein” (1900), in which he

started to find his own voice. These early efforts, written under the influence of Klipping and

Russian novelists, he later labeled as heavy and exaggerated. ‘The Island Pharisees” (1904) was

the first book which came out under his own name. Galsworthy wrote it originally in the first

person, then in the third, and revised it again. Its final version was not finished until 1908.

Galsworthy also gained recognition as a dramatist with his plays, which dealt directly with the

unequal division of the wealth and the unfair treatment of the poor people. ‘The Silver Box”

(1906) stated that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, “Strife” (prod. in 1909),

depicted a mining strike, and “Justice” (prod. In 1910) encouraged the Home Secretary, Winston

Churchill, in his program for prison reform. Later plays include “The Skin Game” (1920), filmed

by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931, “Loyalties”(1922), dealing with the theme of anti-Semitism, and

“Escape” (1926), filmed for the second time in 1948 by 20th

Century-Fox, starring Rex Harrison.

In all of Galsworthy's plays, as Mr. Eaton said of “Justice”, the Audience is the Villain. The

unpardonable sin is indifference. The protagonists in his drama and his prose fiction

generally typify particular viewpoints or beliefs. Explaining his method of characterization, he

wrote, "In the greatest fiction the characters, or some of them, should sum up and symbolize

whole streaks of human nature in a way that our friends, however well known to us, do not….

Within their belts are cinctured not only individuals but sections of mankind." He also stated that

his aim was to create a fictional world that was richer than life itself.

With “The Man of Property” in 1906 Galsworthy was definitely established in the front rank of

contemporary English novelists, and the same year saw the writing and production of ‘The Silver

Box”.

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Although “The Silver Box” was his first completed drama, it was not quite the author’s first use

of the dramatic medium. As far back as 1901 he had begun work on a play to be called “The

Civilised”, but the project had to be abandoned, for the field he was attempting to cover was too

cast for the restricted limits of a drama.

1.4 Criticism and contributions to the Modern Drama

Galsworthy’s sympathy for the underdog was transparent, in spite of his efforts to hold his

sense and sensibility in balance in his dramas like: The Strife (1909), Justice (1910) and The

Skin Game (1920). However, better artistry in his novels and his subconscious sympathy with

the Forsytes resulted in the obscurity of vision. It led to the virulent attacks by the younger critics

like Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. He has never been accorded the depth of study he

deserved as a novelist. Even critics, who admired him, appreciated him for ‘his large scale

pictures of the professional and aristocratic classes and for his graceful and suave literary style’.

John Galsworthy produced 20 novels, 27 plays, 3 collections of poetry, 173 short stories, 5

collections of essays, 700 letter, and many sketches and miscellaneous works. Galsworthy’s

socially committed work was attacked by D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Wolf, who said in her

essay ‘Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown’, that the Edwardian writers “developed a technique of novel

writing which suits their purpose…But those tools are not our tools, and that business is not our

business.” The younger generation of writers accused Galsworthy of being thoroughly

embodying the values he was supposed to be criticizing. According to some biographers,

Galsworthy, a “decent chap” of his times, was dominated by his wife who was atrocious and

hypochondriac. On the other hand, his influence is seen in the works of Thomas Mann, and he

was widely read in France and Russia. “The Forsyte Saga” gained a huge popular success as a

BBC television series in 1967.

He was elected as the first president of the International PEN literary club in 1921, was

appointed to the Order of Merit in 1929—after earlier turning down a knighthood—and was

awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932.

In 2007, Kingston University, London opened a new building named in recognition of his local

birth.The most prolific English dramatist, John Galsworthy, is at the same time a great artist

whose dramatic quality can be compared with that of only one other living writer, namely,

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Gerhart Hauptmann. Galsworthy, even as Hauptmann, is neither a propagandist nor a moralist.

His background is life, "that palpitating life," which is the root of all sorrow and joy.

His attitude toward dramatic art is given in the following words:

"I look upon the stage as the great beacon light of civilization, but the drama should lead the

social thought of the time and not direct or dictate it."

"The great duty of the dramatist is to present life as it really is. A true story, if told sincerely, is

the strongest moral argument that can be put on the stage. It is the business of the dramatist so to

present the characters in his picture of life that the inherent moral is brought to light without any

lecturing on his part."

"Moral codes in themselves are, after all, not lasting, but a true picture of life is. A man may

preach a strong lesson in a play which may exist for a day, but if he succeeds in presenting real

life itself in such a manner as to carry with it a certain moral inspiration, the force of the message

need never be lost, for a new interpretation to fit the spirit of the time can renew its vigor and

power." John Galsworthy has undoubtedly succeeded in presenting real life. It is this that makes

him so thoroughly human and universal.

Chapter 2

2.1 Vedat Kokona’s life and education

Vedat Kokona was born on August 8th

, 1983, in Izmir, Turkey, in an Albanian family. His family

was from Gjirokastra, and his father, Elmaz, was a layer. After his family came back in Albania

in 1920, he followed the primary school in Tirana, finished high school in 1935 in Korca, and

then studied law in Paris.

After finishing his studies, he was appointed to the Civil Court of Kruja, an office that he did not

accept. In 1949 he was appointed as an editor and translator in the publishing-house “Naim

Frashëri” and as a professor of French language at the University of Tirana, where he taught

French until he retired. He won the first prize for his novel “Lutja e fundit”; a prize which gave

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him the opportunity to go on pilgrimage and later on to write a very famous autobiography book

titled “Nga Tirana në Stokholm”, in 1935.

2.2 Career as a translator and his translations

Vedat Kokona is a well known Abanian translator, writer and lexicologist of the 20th

century.

The renowned poet, writer, translator and lexicographer represents a personality of the Albanian

culture. He is well known for his bilingual dictionaries, English-Albanian and French-Albanian,

and his contributions in the Albanian lexicology and lexicography. He gave a major contribution

in the vast number of translations since when he was young. Some of the works he translated are:

“Ana Karenina” by Lev N. Tolstoj;

“Lamtumirë armë” by Ernest Hemingway;

“…Dhe ky Friuli do më këndojë në zemër përngaherë” by Enzo Driussi;

“Sonete” by William Shakespeare;

“Fabula të zgjedhura” by Jean de La Fontain;

“Horaci” by Pierre Corneille;

“Plaku dhe Deti” by Ernest Hemingway;

“David Koperfildi” by Charles Dickens; etc.

For his precious work, Vedat Kokona, was awarded the honorary titles:

“Doktor Honoris Causa” by the Ministry of Education, Republic of Albania,

“Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres” by the Ministry of Culture, Republic of France,

“Officier des Palmes Academiques” by the Ministry of Education, Republic of France

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Vedat Kokona, the short story writer and poet, was also one of the leading figures of pre-

communist literature, known for the originality of his ideas and his elegant language modeled on

the French classics. He had published a few poems to pay his toll to communism.5

2.3 Contributions to the Albanian Literature and criticism

Professor Vedat Kokona’s translations include 20 000 verses and 100 volumes in prose from the

works of Voltaire, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, Dante, Jean de La Fontaine, Pierre

Corneille, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gorki, etc. Some of his translations and

dictionaries are enlisted below:

French-Albanian Dictionary, published by Rilindja, in 1990.

Albanian-French Dictionary, by Vedat Kokona, Raul Lilo, Kornelja Sima, published by

Toena,in 1998

“Thërrime me mjaltë”: Albanian Grammar, published by Eureka, in 1995.

“Ëndrra e një nate vere”, by William Shakespeare, translated by Vedat Kokona, published by

Naim Frasheri, in 1968.

“Tregime Amerikane”, Translated from russian by Vedat Kokona, published by Naim

Frasheri, in 1955.

“Saga e Forsajtëve” by John Galsworthy, translated by Vedat Kokona, published by Naim

Frasheri, in 1969. Etc.

He also has cooperated with other well known translators, such as:

Edmond Tupja (they wrote “Dictionnaire albanais-francais”; 35000 words);

Kornelja Sima(together translated many books, like “Stuhi në Gang”, “Endur në tisin e

kohës”, “Letra e një të panjohure”, “David Koperfild” etc);

Loredan Bubani (“Ana Karenina”, “Saga e Forsajtëve” etc),

5 Pipa,Arshi. “Comunism and Albanian Writers”, published in the exile journal “Shqiptari I lire”, New York,

1959

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Astrit Kasimati (“Bankieri”etc), Anton Pashku (“Yje të këputur”etc),

Irena Toci, Arian Leka, Moisi Zaloshnja, Llazar Taci, Flora Koka, Sokrat Sheperi, Kornelja

Sima, Raul Lilo, Nelson Qirjako etc.

Chapter 3

3.1 The social, economic and historical background of England during the time the

book was written

During World War I Galsworthy tried to enlist in the army, but he was rejected due to his

shortsightedness. In France he worked for the Red Cross, and helped refugees in Belgium.

Galsworthy refused knighthood in 1917 in the belief that writers should not accept titles. He also

gave away at least half of his income to humanitarian causes. In 1924 Galsworthy founded PEN,

the international organization of writers, with Catherine Dawson Scott. Its trust fund was

financed by his Nobel Prize money. The organization was named PEN when someone pointed

out at the first meeting that the initial letters on poet, essayist and novelist were the same in most

European languages.

During the war, when we all knew that many persons in Europe were starving and babies

dying for the lack of milk, it seemed abominable to many American women to consider

thoughtfully what they should select from the grocer for the household dinner; but what was to

be done? Go without eating because others were forced to do so? Eat with such remorse as to

ensure indigestion? Become hardhearted and eventually callous?

All these may seem to be absurdly far from the consideration of the plays of John

Galsworthy; but it is out of such interior conflicts that the plays have come into being.

Galsworthy is an aristocrat in blood and intellect. But unfortunately for his peace of mind, he has

all annoyingly importunate conscience. He is not a socialist, but his sympathy with the poor is so

strong that he cannot enjoy himself. There are many people living in poverty who think it an

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outrage that they should suffer from the lack of necessities when so many have a superfluity of

luxuries; but John Galsworthy, while it is impossible that he should share their condition,

actually shares their rage. When he wakes up in the morning in pleasant surroundings and sits

down to an excellent breakfast, his pleasure in it is poisoned by the fact that so many persons of

equally estimable character are condemned to hardship. This is the kind of thing that ultimately

drove Tolstoi into madness; but Galsworthy will be saved from extremes by his inheritance of

English common sense. To be a penniless communist is mentally comfortable, as it is to be a

radical without any responsibility; to be a selfish plutocrat is both physically and mentally

comfortable; but to be an unselfish aristocrat with burning sympathy for the “lower classes” and

yet to realize one’s impotence to change social conditions, is not to have an ideally happy state of

mind. When those two champions, Theory and Practice, engage in a daily duel on the stage of

one’s brain, the result is an intolerable situation from which there is no way out. It ought not to

continue, yet it can neither cease nor change.

3.2 History of the first book of The Forsyte Saga

The author’s life is closely related to the story of the trilogy. The first manuscript of “The

Forsyte Saga” is merely a “Note on ‘The Man of Property’” to the effect that the “original typed

manuscripts” of this novel were destroyed by the author “ in shame and despair at their chaotic

and illegible condition.” Incidentally, he also gives certain facts which serve to illustrate the

influence of locality and mood upon literary creation.

The book, according to the note, was begun in May of 1903 at his “sister’s, Mabel Reynold’s

house, Torrington Gardens, Campden Hill, and was finished at Levanto on the Italian Riviera on

February 20th

, 1905.”

“It was written,” he concludes, “in restlessness circumstances and on all sorts of paper and was

terribly cut about. Nevertheless I much regret the moody destruction of those sheets.”

He doubtless foresaw that the absence of the manuscript of the first novel would prevent the

complete tracing of the development of his technique as evidenced in the originals.

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“The Forsyte Saga” was the title originally destined for the part of it which is called ‘The Man

of Property” "; and to adopt it for the collected chronicles of the Forsyte family has indulged the

Forsytean tenacity that is in all of us. It is significant that the title was intended to be used for

“The Man of Property”, and entertained, so he had informed, no prospect of writing sequels of

the novels.

The word Saga might be objected to on the ground that it connotes the heroic and that there is

little heroism in these pages. But it is used with a suitable irony; and, after all, this long tale,

though it may deal with folk in frock coats, furbelows, and a gilt-edged period, is not devoid of

the essential heat of conflict. Discounting for the gigantic stature and blood-thirstiness of old

days, as they have come down to us in fairy-tale and legend, the folk of the old Sagas were

Forsytes, assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of beauty

and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never

were, seem to startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the

Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the prime force, and that "family"

and the sense of home and property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent efforts to

"talk them out."

The Man of Property is the first of the three novels in The Forsyte Saga. It chronicles the

vicissitudes of the leading member of an upper-middle-class British family, Soames Forsyte.

Only a few generations removed from their ancestors, the Forsytes are keenly aware of their

status as ‘noveau rich’. He sees himself as a ‘man of property’ in quest of an all exclusive

preoccupation in accumulating wealth.

This novel has three parts. The first part proceeds from the engagement of June Forsyte, the

granddaughter of Old Jolyon, the patriarch of the Forsyte family to Philip Bosinney, an architect

without much fortune. It continues with an account of Old Jolyon’s visit to the Opera, a dinner

party at Swithin’s, a plan to build a country house by Somes Forsyte, to the death of Aunt Ann.

The eldest of the Forsyte.

The second part deals with the progress of the country house at Robin Hill and the credibility

Bosinney as architect tries to establish with Soames Forsyte. He is even ready to cancel the

contract as the interference of Soames in each and every matter increases. This second part also

traces the growing love of Irene for the architect, Philip Bosinney, Soames Forsyte reacts to it

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violently. He treats Irene as a mere property and not as a wife, made clear by the behavior of

Soames Forsyte on different occasions in the novel.

The third part of the novel has a trial scene where Soames sues Bosinney for “a breach of

promise” case. Here the argument in court goes in favor of Soames. Soames’ decision to go to

the country house, in Robin Hill, is a major incident in this part. The death of Bosinney due to an

omnibus accident and the Young Jolion’s visit to Robin Hill to meet Irene lays seeds for future

development of the story in the sequence of the novels.

3.3 Author’s style

John Galsworthy set about fitting himself for a writer’s career with singular steadfastness. In the

after years he gave it as his opinion that writing was a profession which almost anyone could

master in time, providing he had sufficient perseverance to stick at it for long enough6.

Doubtless in Galsworthy the predisposition and talent were already there, though latent, when he

set himself with so much earnestness to attain the mastery of his art. From the beginning until the

end of his career, his unflagging industry and painstaking scrupulousness of detail never relaxed;

his manuscripts were revised again and again, not once but many times. For instance, “The

Island Pharisees” was written three times over. By the end of 1911, the eleventh revision of “The

Fugitive” and the seventh revision of “The Pigeon” were completed7.

His whole correspondence is a proof of his “professional” consciousness. Galsworthy was

fortunate in having excellent friends, enlightened, ungrudging and lucid. Their criticisms must

have proved invaluable to him; how much did he owe to such correspondents as Edward Garnett

and Professor Gilbert Murray who spared no trouble in discussing his work with him, and

winning him over to their view if they deemed he had been mistaken in some incident of a plot

or in some piece of dialogue. He himself was almost amenable to such advice, and, for his own

part neglected no detail, however trifling. His writing of “Justice” was preceded by numerous

6 He even went as far as denying the importance of all technique. In the above-mentioned summary of past years

(see preceding note) he also wrote: “Some writers at least are not born… He who is determined to write and has the

grit to see the job through can get there in time…” In a discussion with James Boyd, he declared that «he considered

too much attention was paid by young authors to technique» (Marrot, p. 565). 7 Marrot, p.310.

- 19 -

visits to prisons and careful studying of the problem of solitary confinement (Marrot, pp.218-

251). When proposing to end “The Fugitive” with Clare’s suicide, he consulted his doctor as to

the uses and effects of certain poisons (Marrot, p. 370). In a letter written in April, 1910, he

gratefully acknowledged some technical inaccuracies in “Justice” to a correspondent who had

written to him about it, assuring him that “Distrusting my own knowledge….. I put my second

act before a lawyer with great knowledge; unfortunately he omitted to call my attention to those

points. I shall go down this very morning and remedy the first and third of your points…”

(Marrot, p.263) . On June 11, 1921, he sent a letter to Rve. John Hedley, and, not without a touch

of gentle irony, promises to change the name of “Confucius” to “Chinese dog” in the rest of the

‘White Monkey” serial, lest this irreverent naming of Fleur Mont’s pekinese might hurt the

feelings of some Chinese reader (Marrot, p. 517).

It was easy to recognize in him something of a belated romantic writer. He had a leaning

towards the sentimental, which was apparent enough under the artistic discipline that he imposed

upon himself in his prose fiction. He was extremely sensitive to some forms of evil, which he felt

in his heart more than he analyzed them with his brain.8

Galsworthy maintains himself as the narrative point. But repeatedly he focalizes through the

various characters. The technique of narration and the co-texts clarify that he is neither a strong

champion of the dominant ideology of the period, nor a pleader for reform. However, he

criticizes without offending the dominant ideology of non-interference as a state policy and

competition, whose other name is possession as the only ideal for the individual. The promotion

of the awareness of nature proves more effective than an activist plan pleading for about social

change…because the change will be from within and more lasting.

In technique Turgenev is one of his teachers. As in the charming Russian narrator, we find in

Galsworthy a definite musical charm catching and keeping the hidden feelings. His intuition is so

infallible that he can content himself with a slight allusion and a broken hint. But then there is

Galsworthy’s irony, such a singular instrument that even the tone separates him from any other

writer. There are many different kinds of irony. One principal kind is negative and can be

compared to the hoar-frost of the windows in a house where there is no fire, where the hearth has

grown cold long ago. But there is also an irony friendly to life, springing from warmth, interest,

8 V.Dupont, “John Galsworthy: The Dramatic Artist”, p.28-29, France, 1942.

- 20 -

and humanity; such is Galsworthy’s. His is an irony that, in the presence of tragicomic evil,

seems to question why it must be so, why it is necessary, and whether there is nothing to remedy

it. Sometimes Galsworthy makes nature herself take part in that ironic play about human beings,

to underline the bitterness or sweetness of the incidents with the help of winds, clouds,

fragrances, and bird cries.

Chapter 4

4.1Translation Assessment of “The Forsyte Saga”

4.1.1 Preservation of the author’s style

The translation of a literary work can not only be received with curiosity by the readers, but it

can also become part of the literature into which the work is translated, by carrying out the same

functions as the original literary work. Apart from this, the translated literary work

informs the reader about the foreign culture and at the same time advances and enriches the

reader’s general knowledge and culture. The translator through a translated literary work,

depending on historical circumstances, can have an impact on inciting and expanding the

friendship and cultural relationship between different nations, on the one hand, and on the other

hand the translated literary works can also have an impact on the development advancement of

different literary kinds and genres.

If a translation is to meet the four basic requirements of (1) making sense, (2) conveying the

spirit and the manner of the original, (3) having a natural and easy form of expression, and (4)

producing a similar response, it is obvious that at certain points conflict between content and

form (or meaning and manner) will be acute, and that one or the other must give way. Ingeneral

translators have agreed that, when there is no happy compromise, meaning must have priority

over style. What one must attempt, however is an effective blend of “matter and manner”, for

these two aspects of any message are inseparably united.

Galsworthy’s style is very complex; he uses many stylistic devices, many figures of speech, but

as we will see throughout the trasnlatin assessment, Kokona has done a wonderful job, not only

- 21 -

in preserving his style, but also in rendering the same meaning. In a few words has done a

masterful blend of “matter and manner”, and this is what we will study thoroughly.

4.1.2 Stylemes, key words, exposition, omissions, additions and dialogue

(colloquialisms)

Many stylistic elements, such as stylemes and metaphors and epithets, even omissions and

additions are very interesting elements to be taken into consideration in the translation

assessment. Stylemes are those part of a piece of work which enrich it and make it interesting

and also somehow unique, since every translator has his own intelligence and thus everyone may

come up with his/her individual version of translation of the same paragraph.

The following stylemes are taken from the paragraph mentioned later on in Paganism in the

Forsyte Saga:

The English Original Version The Albanian Translated Version

he wanted company ia donte zemra të kishte një njeri pranë

wanted a pretty face to look at ia kish ënda të shikonte një fytyrë të bukur

People treated the old as if they wanted

nothing

Njerëzia venë me mendje se plaku s’ka nevojë

për asgjë

One’s never had enough! With a foot in the

grave one’ll want something, I shouldn’t be

surprised!

«Ne s’kënaqemi kurrë me atë që kemi! Edhe

atëherë kur je me një këmbë në varr dëshiron

diçka

away from the exigencies of affairs larg andrrallave të jetës,

Grandchildren fëmijët e fëmijës

, most religiously responsive e kish ndier pothuaj me gjithë shpirt

nowadays Nature actually made him ache e ndiente kaq shumë natyrën sa ajo i

shkaktonte si një sëmbim në zëmër.

We see how all these stylemes give life to the translated version. Instead of translating “he

wanted company” as “donte shoqëri” or “kishte nevojë për shoqëri”, Kokona translates it as “ia

donte zemra të kishte një njeri pranë”, making us understand that it was a deeply felt need.

- 22 -

The Forsytes have a very noticeable character; all they value the most is property and wealth.

Their character is revealed since in the first sentence of the book:

“Those privileged to be present at a family

festival of the Forsytes have seen that

charming and instructive insight—an upper

middle class family in full plumage. But

whosoever of these favoured persons has

possessed the gift of psychological analysis

(a talent without monetary value and properly

ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a

spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but

illustrative of an obscure human problem.”

“Të gjithë ata që kanë pasur fatin të ndodhen

në një festë familjare në shtëpinë e Forsajtëve,

kanë parë diçka të bukur, nga e cila kanë

mësuar mjaft: një familje të borgjezisë së lartë

në tërë madhështinë e saj. Por cilido nga ata të

privilegjuarit, që ka pasur dhuntinë e analizës

psicologjike (dhuratë që nuk ka vlerë si

monedhë dhe që, për këtë arsye, nuk ngre

peshë për Forsajtët), ka qenë dëshmitar i një

shfaqjeje, jo vetëm të këndshme në vetvete, po

edhe që shërben për të ndritur një problem të

errët të njerëzve.”

We can easily understand that “money” comes first for the Forsytes.

The very first key word that we encounter in the novel is the word “sniff”, which firstly

introduces us with the Forsytes, their behavior and mentality, and of course their sense of

superiority and property.

The habitual sniff on the face of Soames

Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they

were on their guard.

The subconscious offensiveness of their

attitude has constituted old Jolyon's 'home' the

psychological moment of the family history,

made it the prelude of their drama.

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not

individually, but as a family; this resentment

expressed itself in an added perfection of

Ngërdheshja, që vihej re zakonisht në fytyrën

e Soms Forsajtit, dukej tani edhe në fytyrat e

tyre; kishte përshtypjen sikur përgjonin një

armik.

Qëndrimi i tyre armiqësor, - një qëndrim që

ishte krejt i pavetëdijshëm, - bënte këtë festë në

shtëpinë e plakut Xholion një cast psikologjik

në historinë e familjes, preludin e dramës së

tyre. Forsajtët ishin zemëruar me diçka jo secili

veç e veç por si një familje; këtë zemërim ata e

- 23 -

raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an

exaggeration of family importance, and--the

sniff. Danger--so indispensable in bringing out

the fundamental quality of any society, group,

or individual--was what the Forsytes scented;

the premonition of danger put a burnish on

their armour. For the first time, as a family,

they appeared to have an instinct of being in

contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.

shprehnin me një spitullim të përkryer dhe të

tepruar, me shfaqjen e një përzemërsie

familjare, me një tepri të rëndësisë së familjes

dhe nuhatja e Rrezikut, që është kaq e

domosdoshme ose që vë në dukje cilësinë

kryesore të çdo shoqërie, grupi ose njeriu, ishte

ajo që ndjenin Forsajtët; parandjenja e rrezikut

i kishte bërë ata që të ishin gati për luftë. Për

herë të parë, si familje, dukeshin sikur e

kuptonin instinktivisht se kishin rënë në

kontakt me diçka të huaj dhe të rrezikshme.

We are introduced with Soames and the whole family’s reaction towards the smallest trifle they

notice. The “sniff” is something which had spread in all their faces and they got a subconscious

offensive attitude. Stylemes are an important element in Kokona’s translation style; “the sniff” is

translated as “ngërdheshja” and then as “nuhatja”; “raiment” is rendered as “spitullim”. The

translator has used addition and repetition too: “The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude”

was translated as “Qëndrimi i tyre armiqësor, - një qëndrim që ishte krejt i pavetëdijshëm”.

All the Forsytes had sniffed the danger of being in contact with something strange and unsafe;

and all were on their guard. This instinct of being in danger and the offensive attitude, which

seemed as if they were in defiance of something, was triggered from a trifle detail,- a trifle that

for the Forsytes was significant, a detail in which was embedded the meaning of the whole

matter. The Forsytes had instinctive precautions and resented encroachments on their property;

and this trifle showed to them that Bosinney had no property and wealth, and that would mean to

accept a non-wealthy person in their perfect world of numbers and figures and properties.

This is when the author introduces the other important key word that we encounter since in the

beginning of the saga, the word “Hat”.

When Bosinney enters the room in the Forsyte’s house, the first thing the Forsytes notice is his

hat. His hat becomes a joke for everyone, but the strange thing is that each of the Forsytes

- 24 -

noticed it, and thinks that they would never put such a hat if they were him. The “hat” is one of

the first key words purposely used to make us understand how superficial the Forsytes are. Such

a ‘significant trifle’ as a hat, is predicted to reveal the whole character, in terms of their ideal,-

namely, money and money values. They all cry in one voice against such a visit in such a ‘hat’,

and the narrator’s tone of exaggeration reveals his irony:

“They could not have explained the origin of a

misgiving obscured by the mist of family

gossip. A story was undoubtedly told that he

had paid his duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, and

Hester, in a soft grey hat--a soft grey hat, not

even a new one--a dusty thing with a shapeless

crown. "So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd,"

Aunt Hester, passing through the little, dark

hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to

'shoo' it off a chair, taking it for a strange,

disreputable cat--Tommy had such disgraceful

friends! She was disturbed when it did not

move.”

“Ata nuk mund të shpjegonin se ku e kishte

burimin ai mosbesim që e kishin errësuar

thashethemet familjare. Sidoqoftë, thuhej –dhe

për këtë s’kishte asnjë dyshim – se ai kishte

vajtur për vizitë te tezet Eni, Xhuli dhe Hesteri

me një kapelë të butë ngjyrë hiri – një kapelë

e butë ngjyrë hiri që nuk kishte as e re – tërë

pluhur dhe pa formë. «Një gjë shumë e

çuditshme, besa, sa të merrte gazi kur e

shihje!» Teze Hesteri, duke kaluar nga salloni i

vogël dhe i errët (ishte pak dritëshkurtër) kishte

pandehur se mos ishte ndonjë mace e huaj

rrugaçe. –Tomi kish ca shokë që të turpëronin!

– dhe kishte dashur ta dëbonte nga karrigia.

Kish mbetur shumë e habitur kur «macja» nuk

kishte lëvizur nga vendi!”

It seems so extraordinary to the Forsytes that Bosinney came in such a hat, that this trifle

becomes a source of misgiving for them, a trifle that seems to be unveil something dangerous for

them. We notice how Kokona has translated these paragraphs trying to make them come as

simply and smoothly as it is in the source text; and also we notice how the tone of exaggeration

raises:

…the Forsytes had fastened by intuition on this

hat; it was their significant trifle, the detail in

which was embedded the meaning of the whole

Forsajtët ishin kapur fort pas kësaj kapele; kjo

ishte për ta ajo vogëlsi kuptimplotë, hollësia në

të cilën qe fshehur kuptimi i gjithë çështjes;

- 25 -

matter; for each had asked himself: "Come,

now, should I have paid that visit in that hat?"

and each had answered "No!" and some, with

more imagination than others, had added: "It

would never have come into my head!"

sepse secili nga ata i kishte bërë vetes këtë

pyetje: «A do të kisha vajtur për vizitë unë me

një kapelë të tillë? » dhe secili qe përgjigjur:

«Jo!» dhe disa, që e kishin përfytyrimin më të

zhvilluar se të tjerët, kishin shtuar: «Kjo gjë

s’do të më shkonte kurrë ndër mend!»

In this paragraph we notice that the translator omitted the word “intuition” and the colloquial

expression “come now”, and just has translated the sentences as : “ishin kapur fort pas kësaj

kapele” and “A do të kisha vajtur për vizitë unë me një kapelë të tillë?”.

They keep giving much attention to that trifle, which then becomes the reason for which they

start joking about Bosinney and even called him as the ‘Buccaneer’, a mot that was bandied form

mouth to mouth, till it became the favorite mode of alluding to Bosinney.

Among the most frequent landscape set of the Forsyte Saga the greatest attention is paid to the

image of fog. The fog becomes a key word as it plays a very important role in the figurative

system of the novel “The Man of Property”. The most dramatic events in characters’ life are

connected with the image of London fog. So, a scene of Irene leaving Soames is accompanied

with the following landscape image:

..the fog of late November wrapping the town

as in some monstrous blanket till the trees of

the Square even were barely visible from the

dining-room window..

Mjegulla e nëntorit po e mbulonte qytetin si

me një batanije shumë të madhe, aq sa edhe

drurët e Skuerit mezi dukeshin nga dritarja e

dhomës së bukës.

When James comes to know about the possible scandal of the love between Irene and Bosinney

and that Irene left Soames, the author uses the key word fog to tell how it feels:

Now, however, that such a thing--or rather the

rumour, the breath of it--had come near him

personally, he felt as in a fog, which filled

his mouth full of a bad, thick flavour, and

Por tani një gjë e tillë –ose më mirë të themi

pëshpëritja, fryma e saj –e kishte prekur

personalisht, atij i dukej sikur ndodhej në mes

të një mjegulle që ia mbushte gojën, me një

- 26 -

made it difficult to draw breath. amëz të keqe e të rëndë që nuk e linte të merrte

frymë lirisht.

And it suddenly sprang into James's mind that

he ought to go and see for himself. In the midst

of that fog of uneasiness in which his mind was

enveloped the notion that he could go and look

at the house afforded him inexplicable

satisfaction.

Dhe, papritmas, Xhejmsit i kërceu trilli të

ngrihej e të vinte për të parë se si qëndronte

puna. Në mes të asaj mjegulle, që i kishte

pështjellë mendjen, mendimi se mund të vente

e ta shihte vetë shtëpinë ia mbushi shpirtin me

një kënaqësi të thellë.

The next key word that we encounter is the word “scandal”:

A scandal! A possible scandal!

To repeat this word to himself thus was the

only way in which he could focus or make it

thinkable. He had forgotten the sensations

necessary for understanding the progress, fate,

or meaning of any such business; he simply

could no longer grasp the possibilities of

people running any risk for the sake of passion.

Një skandal! Si qe e mundur të ndodhte një

skandal!

Mënyra e vetme për të përqëndruar gjithë

vëmendjen e e tij të ishte që të përsëriste

shumë herë këtë fjalë. Ai i kish harruar ndjesit

që ishin të nevojshme për të kuptuar

përparimin, fatin ose për të rrokur kuptimin e

një çështjeje të tillë; ai thjesht nuk arrinte të

kuptonte se si mund të rrezikonte njeriu për hir

të dashurisë.

The way “A possible scandal!” is translated as “Si qe e mundur të ndodhte një skandal!” once

more illustrates how good a translator Kokona is, he is a poet in himself. The Forsytes simply

cannot understand how can people take any risk for the sake of passion, for the sake of love.

Passion! He seemed, indeed, to have heard of

it, and rules such as 'A young man and a young

woman ought never to be trusted together' were

fixed in his mind as the parallels of latitude are

fixed on a map (for all Forsytes, when it comes

Dashuria! I dukej me të vërtetë sikur kish

dëgjuar të flitej për të; dhe rregullat si «një

burrë i ri dhe një grua e re nuk duhen lënë

kurrë vetëm» qenë ngulitur në mendjen e tij si

ato paralelet e meridianet që shënohen në

- 27 -

to 'bed-rock' matters of fact, have quite a fine

taste in realism); but as to anything else--well,

he could only appreciate it at all through the

catch-word 'scandal.'

hartat gjeografike, (sepse të gjithë Forsajtët,

kanë një shije të hollë për realizmin, kur i kanë

punët pisk në jetë); por, sa për të tjerat, ai

shihte vetëm hijet e zymta të fjalës «skandal».

As we see, the Forsytes seemed to “have heard” of passion, they use only fact and figures in their

life, for them the relationship and love has rules which are fixed as the parallels of latitude on a

map; which means that is not possible to change their way of thinking no matter what happens;

and when it “comes to ‘bed-rock’ matters of fact, they have quite a fine taste in realism”. All

these are rendered masterfully in the target text, especially “when it comes to 'bed-rock' matters

of fact” translated as “kur i kanë punët pisk në jetë” and “ catch-word ‘scandal’” translated as

“hijet e zymta të fjalës «skandal»”; the translator adds or omits where it is necessary for to

convey the message.

And then again we encounter the fog. Soames is going through the fog searching for Irene.

Bosinney perishes in a fog, powerless to struggle with the world of proprietors.

Soames used the underground again in going

home. The fog was worse than ever at Sloane

Square station. …

And these shadowy figures, wrapped each in

his own little shroud of fog, took no notice of

each other. In the great warren, each rabbit for

himself, especially those clothed in the more

expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on

foggy days, are driven underground. …

But the waiting lover (if lover he were) was

used to policemen's scrutiny, or too absorbed

in his anxiety, for he never flinched. A

hardened case, accustomed to long trysts, to

Somsi i hipi prapë trenit të nëndheshëm për t’u

kthyer në shtëpi. Në Sloun Skuer Stejshën

mjegulla ishte bërë edhe më e dendur. …

Dhe të gjitha këto hije, të pështjella secila me

qefinin e vet të vogël prej mjegulle, nuk

vështronin njëra-tjetrën. Në këtë vend të madh

të lepujve çdo lepur kujdesej për veten e tij,

sidomos ata që kishin veshur një qyrk të

shtrenjtë, ata që kanë frikë t’i hipin karrocës

kur është koha me mjegull dhe udhëtojnë me

trenin e nëndheshëm. …

Por ky dashnor që priste (në qoftë se ishte

dashnor) qe mësuar, me sa dukej, që policët ta

vështronin me vëmendje në mendimet e tij,

- 28 -

anxiety, and fog, and cold, if only his mistress

came at last. Foolish lover! Fogs last until the

spring; there is also snow and rain, no comfort

anywhere; gnawing fear if you bring her out,

gnawing fear if you bid her stay at home!

sepse as që donte t’ia dinte. Ai qe mësuar të

priste shumë kur i linin takim, e duronte edhe

ankthin, edhe mjergullën, edhe të ftohtët,

mjaft që e dashura të vinte më në fund!

Dashnor i marrë! Mjegulla mban gjer në

pranverë; pa është edhe bora, shiu dhe s’gjen

rehat gjëkundi. Frikë e tmerrshme po ta

nxjerrësh të dashurën nga shtëpia, frikë e

tmerrshme po t’i thuash të rrijë në shtëpi!

The scene of Bosinney’s death in the London fog which was becoming more and more dense,

symbolizes young architect’s sufferings and misfortune. Also the author says that after the fog

there is also snow and rain, but that Bosinney is accustomed to long trysts, to anxiety, cold and

fog; he would do any sacrifice required for his passion; which is totally the contrary to the

Forsytes, who are depicted same as rabbits, they care for no one else than themselves, do not risk

anything about anyone, do not know what is love and sacrifice for it, and who would rather

travel safe in the journey of life, in the underground, rather than have to take a path that is unsafe

and unknown, that of love. When property is involved, men tend to objectify about it and in the

course of things they tend to lose their sense of humanity.

Some more stylemes created by the translator are illustrated as followed:

..Old Jolyon passed into his study and out into

the burning afternoon.

... plaku Xholion,… , hyri në studio dhe andej

doli jashtë. Sa vapë që bënte atë pasdreke!

“Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was

disturbed when it did not move.”

–Tomi kish ca shokë që të turpëronin! – dhe

kishte dashur ta dëbonte nga karrigia. Kish

mbetur shumë e habitur kur «macja» nuk

kishte lëvizur nga vendi!”

nowadays Nature actually made him ache e ndiente kaq shumë natyrën sa ajo i

shkaktonte si një sëmbim në zëmër

Come, now, should I have paid that visit in that

hat

A do të kisha vajtur për vizitë unë me një

kapelë të tillë

- 29 -

So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd Një gjë shumë e çuditshme, besa, sa të merrte

gazi kur e shihje!

had tried to 'shoo' it off a chair, , taking it for a

strange, disreputable cat

kishte pandehur se mos ishte ndonjë mace e

huaj rrugaçe… dhe kishte dashur ta dëbonte

nga karrigia.

Dangerous--ah, dangerous! Ishte një gjë e dyshimtë, po, shumë e

dyshimtë!

afforded him inexplicable satisfaction. ia mbushi shpirtin me një kënaqësi të thellë

4.1.3 Epithets and Metaphors

In order to express the feelings of Mr. Jolyon, to demonstrate those views one never would have

noticed, Galsworthy makes use of certain stylistic devices assisting him to convey the

gorgeousness of the situation.

He makes use of such neat epithets like:

“Old Jolyon passed into his study and out into

the burning afternoon”

… “ plaku Xholion,… , hyri në studio dhe

andej doli jashtë. Sa vapë që bënte atë

pasdreke!”

Most of the epithets are used in describing the Forsytes, their apparence, their character, etc.

especially in the exposition, when we are introduces with the characters, and then of course

throughout the entire novel.

Among the younger generation, in the tall,

bull-like George, in pallid strenuous Archibald,

in young Nicholas with his sweet and tentative

obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly

determined Eustace, there was this same

stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but

Në mes të Forsajtëve të brezit të ri, te Xhorxhi

i bëshëm, që ishte si dem, tek Arçibaldi i

zbëhtë dhe energjik, te Nikolla i ri, që ishte i

ëmbël, i kujdesshëm dhe kokëfortë, te Justejsi

hijerëndë e i vendosur, por mendjemadh, do ta

vije re këtë karakteristikë – ndoshta më pak të

- 30 -

unmistakable--a sign of something ineradicable

in the family soul.

theksuar, por të pagabuar – që ishte di shenja e

diçkaje që nuk mund të çrrënjosej nga shpirti i

familjes.

It is obvious that the author used a vivid imagination in the description of things, places and

persons in the novel, pointing out to the reader some properties or features of the objects with the

aim of giving an individual perception and evaluation of the features or properties and these are

called Epithets.

Let us take some epithets into consideration:

gold-mounted umbrella ombrella me kokw tw praruar

This epithet is classified as a reverse one, which is composed of two nouns linked by an ‘of

phrase’. If we were going to make it an ordinary phrase it would be umbrella mounted with gold.

However it could be a compound epithet as well.

Other epithets are illustrated as follows:

…was rather short-sighted… …ishte pak dritë shkurtër…

And symbolizing Bosinney's name 'the big

one,' with his great stature and bulk, his thick

white hair, his puffy immovable shaven face,

he looked more primeval than ever in the

highly upholstered room.

Dhe, si për të simbolizuar emrin «trashaluqi»

që i kishte ngjitur Bosini, me atë trup të gjatë e

të bëshëm, me ata flokë të dedur e të bardhë,

me atë fytyrë të mbufatur e të rruar mirë, dukej

më i lashtë se herët e tjera në atë sallon të

mbushur me mobilie.

One of the most interesting parts is that one of the personification of nature, the passage is full of

epithets, similies, metaphors, repetition and parallel constructions, untying in front of the reader

the situation presiding upon everyone, the way they felt in front of the new danger, having no

desire to spread the scandal, or to be ill-natured. Everyone felt uneasy, every Forsyte felt the

danger, but to outsiders no word was breathed, unwritten law kept them silent.

There are moments when Nature reveals the

passion hidden beneath the careless calm of

Ka çaste kur natyra zbulon pasionin e

fshehur nën qetësinë e shkujdesur të

- 31 -

her ordinary moods--violent spring flashing

white on almond-blossom through the purple

clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single

star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or

against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree

standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.

There are moments, too, when in a picture-

gallery, a work, noted by the casual spectator

as '......Titian--remarkably fine,' breaks through

the defences of some Forsyte better lunched

perhaps than his fellows, and holds him

spellbound in a kind of ecstasy. There are

things, he feels--there are things here which--

well, which are things. Something

unreasoning, unreasonable, is upon him; when

he tries to define it with the precision of a

practical man, it eludes him, slips away, as the

glow of the wine he has drunk is slipping

away, leaving him cross, and conscious of his

liver. He feels that he has been extravagant,

prodigal of something; virtue has gone out of

him. He did not desire this glimpse of what lay

under the three stars of his catalogue. God

forbid that he should know anything about

the forces of Nature! God forbid that he

should admit for a moment that there are

such things! Once admit that, and where was

he? One paid a shilling for entrance, and

another for the programme.

gjendjeve të saj të zakonshme; pranëvera e

harlisur zbardhëllen te bajamet e lulëzuara

përmes reve të purpurta; një majë mali

borëmbuluar e hënëndritur, me yllin vetmitar

përsipër, ngrihet përpjetë në mes të natës së

qetë e të bukur; ose një dëllinjë e moçme

qëndron në sfondin e përflakur të perëndimit si

rojë e një të fshehte të zjarrtë.

Ka gjithashtu caste kur një tablo në një galeri

pikturash që i bie në sy një vizitori të rastit si

«…një vepër shumë e bukur e Ticianit», shpon

pancirin e një Forsajti që mund të ketë ngrënë

një drekë më të mirë se të tjerët atë ditë dhe e

mban të mahnitur si në një gjendje ekstaze. Ka

gjëra, ndien ai atëherë, - ka disa gjëra këtu

që…që janë gjëra; ka diçka që nuk kuptohet,

që nuk e kap arsyeja; dhe kur ai përpiqet ta

përcaktojë këtë diçka me saktësinë e një njeriu

praktik, kjo diçka i rrëshqet, i ikën, si ai afshi i

verës që ka pirë dhe që, si avullohet, e lë të

zymtë e të penduar, se e di që i ka bërë keq

mëlçisë. Ai e ndien se e ka tepruar, se ka qenë

dorëlëshuar dhe se ka humbur virtytin. Ai nuk

donte aspak që t’i zbulohej ajo që fshihej prapa

tri yjeve të vogla që ishin vënë në katalog, Mos

e dhëntë zoti që t’i njohë, qoftë edhe pak,

forcat e Natyrës! Zoti mos ë dhëntë që të

pranojë qoftë edhe për një çast, se ka në

botë të tilla gjëra! Sa të pranoje këtë kush e di

si e kishe fundin! Paguaje një shiling për të

hyrë dhe një tjetër për katalogun.

- 32 -

The look which June had seen, which other

Forsytes had seen, was like the sudden flashing

of a candle through a hole in some imaginary

canvas, behind which it was being moved--the

sudden flaming-out of a vague, erratic glow,

shadowy and enticing.

Vështrimi që kishte parë Xhuni, që e kishin

parë edhe Forsajtët e tjerë, ishte si vezullimi i

befasishëm i flakës së një qiriu për mes vrimës

së një perdeje të përfytyruar, prapa së cilës

levizte ajo,- shkrepëtima e befasishme e një

dritë të martë dhe endacake, mahnitëse dhe të

mistershme.

The translation of metaphor has always been a source of discussion and conflict. In prescriptive

approaches, translation theorists tend to present lists of “advisable” translation procedures for

each type of metaphor (see Nida & Taber 1982, Newmark 1988a, etc.). However, Descriptive

Translation Studies (DTS) have introduced a more realistic study of metaphor translation,

covering cases penalized a priori by traditional studies for being ‘anomalous’ or ‘incorrect’

equivalences.

Cognitive Linguistics claims that metaphors ‘permeate’ and ‘pervade’ both language and

thought. This theory defines metaphors as essential cognitive tools which consist as a structural

mapping from a source conceptual domain on to a target conceptual domain. The term

‘metaphor; is generally used as an equivalent of ‘conceptual metaphor’ (the major basis of out

conceptual system), whereas the expressions ‘linguistic metaphor’ or ‘metaphorical expression’

mean the linguistic items chosen to realize a particular conceptual metaphor.

According to Dagut (1987:77), “metaphor presets a particularly searching test of the translator’s

ability”. Anyway, the translation of metaphor is problematic, no matter which approach to

metaphor is chosen.

Some theoreticians have attempted at a classification of the “degree of translatability” of

metaphors. There is a rather wide range of positions found in translation studies on the

translatability of metaphors; they can however be reduced in to four basic standpoints:

Metaphors are untranslatable. Nida (1964), Vinay and Dalbernet (1958) and Dagut

(1976 and 1987) believe that any translation process of a particular metaphor would in

effect bring about a different metaphor. Metaphors would then be based on an

isomorphism, unpredictability and thus their translation solutions cannot possibly be

accounted for;

- 33 -

Metaphors are fully translatable. For some authors, metaphors would not pose any

special translation problems. This is the view adopted by Kloepfer (1981), Reiss (1971)

and Mason (1982). For them, there cannot be a theory of the translation of the metaphor,

which is after all one more translational peculiarity; there can only be a theory of the

translation as applied to metaphor; thus, each metaphor would be, as to say, translated as

new;

Metaphors are translatable but pose a considerable degree of interlinguistic

inequivalence. Toury (1985 and 1995) and Newmark (1988a, 1988b) believe that

metaphors present very particular translational peculiarities;

Conciliatory approach. Is represented by Snell-Hornby (1988), who claims that the

range of renderings will depend on the type of text we are dealing with and on ad hoc

factors.

There are a few researchers who have posited generalizations about what Dagut called gradient

of translatability in 1987; unfortunately, most of these proposals are prescriptive, but this does

not mean they are void of interest. Invariably, they use the degree of lexicalization as classifying

feature. For Dagut, the translatability of any given source language metaphor depends on both

the particular cultural experiences and semantic associations exploited by the figure and the

extent to which these can be reproduced non-anomalously in the target language, depending on

the degree of overlap. Thus, “any single generalization about the translatability of metaphor” is

inadequate by nature, since it fails to do justice to the complexity of the factors determining the

ontology of metaphors.

Newmark (1988a:48-49) seems to be convinced that dead metaphors are the most “translatable’

ones; stock and original metaphors would show a degree of translatability proportional to the

proximity of the two polysystems involved.

…the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with

the sound of those church bells…

…britmat e tyre të çjerra përziheshin dhe

zhangëllonin me kumbimin e këmbanave të

kishës…

She had come back like an animal wounded to

death, not knowing where to turn, not knowing

Ajo qe kthyer si një kafshë që është plagosur

për vdekje, se s’dinte ku të vente, se s’dinte

- 34 -

what she was doing. The sight of her figure,

huddled in the fur, was enough.

ç’të bënte. Mjaftonte ta shihje ashtu të tulitur

në qyrkun e saj për t’i kuptuar të gjitha.

When Soames gets that Irene has left him, the author uses many stylistic devices in order to

emphasize the inner sufferings of Soames and the key words and sentences that describe those

feelings are: “the tears rushed up in his eyes, the inner significance of her act, she loathed him,

people living in different worlds, she was to be pitied, he betrayed the Forsyte, the pure ether of

the selfless and unpractical''.

The fact that his wife had taken none of his gifts to her, revealed to Soames the inner

significance of Irene's act, all his hopes were destroyed in one moment. Now he understood that

all the time that they had been married she had loathed him and that they had been living in

different worlds: his was the world of property and hers was the world of emotions.

Among the lexical stylistic devices used to make the reader understand the depth of Soames’

inner crisis the author employs these metaphors:

He looked at the clasps and bracelets of

diamonds and pearls, at the little flat gold

watch with a great diamond set in sapphires, at

the chains and rings, each in its nest, and the

tears rushed up in his eyes and dropped upon

them.

Somsi vështroi karficat dhe gjerdanët me

xhevahire e inxhi, sahatin e vogël e të artë

petashuq me një gur të madh xhevahiri dhe me

safirë, qostekët dhe unazat; të gjitha ishin në

vendet e tyre. Sytë iu mbushën me lot dhe

pastaj lotët u rrokullisën e ranë mbi xhevahiret.

In that moment of emotion he betrayed the

Forsyte in him—forgot himself, his interests,

his property--was capable of almost anything;

was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and

unpractical.

Ashtu i mallëngjyer siç qe tradhtoi frymën e

Forsajtit që jetonte në shpirtin e tij—harroi

vetveten, interest e tij, pasurinë e tij; kuptoi se

qe i zoti të bënte çdo gjë: iu duk sikur u ngrit

lart në eterin e kulluar të vetëmohimit dhe të

jetës jopraktike.

The metaphors “the tears rushed up in his eyes and dropped upon them”, “he betrayed the

Forsyte in him” and “was lifted into the pure ether of the selfless and unpractical”, show

- 35 -

Soames’ moment of weakness as a Forsyte would call it, or the moment of natural human

suffering because of the loss of a beloved person.

They make the reader involuntarily compare Soames’ tears with the precious stones in Irene’s

jewels and describe his complete understanding of his wife’s deserting him. That is why this

very verb is repeated several times:

For the moment, perhaps, he understood

nearly all there was to understand—

understood that she had loathed him, that she

loathed him for years, that for all intents and

purposes they were like people living in

different worlds…

Aty për aty, ndoshta, Somsi kuptoi pothuaj ttë

gjitha ato që mund të kuptonte; kuptoi se ajo

e urrente, se e kishte urryer prej shumë

vjetësh, se në të vërtetë ata kishin qenë krejt të

huaj për njëri-tjetrin, si njerëz që jetojnë në

botë të ndryshme…

And that reiteration is immediately followed by the syntacticall parallelism combined with

another case of reiteration of the verb “to loathe” (“e urrente”); “ that she had loathed him for

years, that for all intents and purposes…, even that she had suffered-that she had to be pitied”

and in the same sentence there is a comparison: “they were like people living in different

worlds”.

Very often the nature comparison and metaphors are sarcastically pronounced.

"A Forsyte," replied young Jolyon, "is not an

uncommon animal. There are hundreds among

the members of this Club. Hundreds out there

in the streets; you meet them wherever you

go!"

-Një Forsajt, - u përgjigj Xholioni i ri, nuk

është një kafshë e rrallë. Ka me qindra në mes

të anëtarëve të këtij klubi. Ka me qindra jashtë

në rrugë. Ju dalin përpara ngado që veni!

In the great warren, each rabbit for

himself, especially those clothed in the more

expensive fur, who, afraid of carriages on

foggy days, are driven underground

Në këtë vend të madh të lepujve çdo lepur

kujdesej për veten e tij, sidomos ata që kishin

veshur një qyrk të shtrenjtë, ata që kanë frikë

t’i hipin karrocës kur është koha me mjegull

dhe udhëtojnë me trenin e nëndheshëm. …

- 36 -

The Forsytes are sarcastically depicted as rabbits, as rabbits of a great warren that think only

about themselves, especially those that were very wealthy.

4.2 Nature in “The Forsyte Saga” and Parallel Constructions

We will see how nature is used in The Forsyte Saga, and how it is depicted in every chapter and

how masterfully it is translated in Albanian by Vedat Kokona. Galsworthy uses nature for

various purposes, for example as a patron of love; in first place the natural force which opposes

Forsytism is love, a feeling which cannot be comprehended by the Forsytes, who recognize only

“facts and figures”. Galsworthy just like a painter displays unique pictures of the nature in his

works; he depicts even the smallest shades of a landscape, and for him, nature, is anything but an

impartial observer of the proceedings. It is an element of the universe which opposes the lack of

love, the inhumanity of the world of property. The society of the Forsytes, their ethics and

morals are unnatural, and they contradict nature and life, and for this reason they are condemned

to destruction.

Galsworthy opposes “life” and “nature” to “the system”, to the outdated traditions and beliefs;

and he is on the side of nature. Landscape in the Forsyte chronicle is functionally complex,

structurally and figuratively rich and various by its coloring.

The events in the novel are closely connected with seasons – summer, autumn, winter and spring.

Nature in the novel also acts as an effective tool to intensify sensual-aesthetic orientation of the

whole work; a feature that can be attributed to all five novels that constitute the saga. All this

work displays the constant artistic skill of Galsworthy, to transform landscape and natural image

to the social event or psychological experience, by means of full or partial parallelism.

Parallel syntactic structures appear, mainly, in those parts of author’s speech which sound either

lyrical or pathetic. For example:

“…Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild

plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour

of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown

along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant

that, when it blooms by chance within the

hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and

when it blooms outside we call a weed; but,

flower or weed, whose scent and colour are

always, wild!”

“…Dashuria nuk është një lule sere, por një

bimë e egër që lind në një natë plot

37

lagështirë, ose në një orë plot diell, që lind

një farë e egër, të cilën e merr me vete

udhëve një erë e egër. Një bimë e egër që,

kur mbin rastësisht në kopshtet tona, e

quajmë lule dhe, kur mbin jashtë gardhit të

kopshtit tonë, e quajmë bar i keq; por lule

ose bar i keq qoftë, aroma dhe ngjyra e saj

janë gjithmonë të egra.”

In this phrasal unity is the basic material to create the image of love and at the same time to

emphasize its social essence, it is quite interesting to see how the binary opposition used in the

source language text is rendered masterfully in the target language text:

hot-house flower vs wild plant lule sere vs bimë e egër

wet night vs hour of sunshine natë plot lagështirë vs orë plot diell

sprung from wild seed vs blown by a wild wind lind një farë e egër vs e merr me vete udhëve

një erë e egër

flower or weed vs are always, wild lule ose bar i keq qoftë vs janë gjithmonë të

egra

The word “wild” (“e egër”) is used repeatedly in order to make the reader understand

unconsciously or not, that love is not something that is under the control of the Forsytes, as it is

wild, it is not like the property; it cannot either be bought or sold. Nature is not only a description

of joyful or sullen landscape, but an element of the universe, opposed to inhumanity of property.

Since the Forsyte society’s ethics and foundations are implacably represented as unnatural and

absonant to nature and life, they’re doomed to degradation.

Galsworthy is an enthusiastic admirer of represented nature, especially the nature in the time of

its flowering.

“But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous

Forsyte spirit travelled far, into God-knows-

what jungle of fancies; with those two young

people, to see what they were doing down

there in the copse--in the copse where the

spring was running riot with the scent of sap

“Por jashtë trupit të tij, që kish rënë në gjumë,

shpirti i tij ziliqar prej Forsajti po

udhëtonte larg, nëpër kush e di se çfarë

xhungële fantazish; udhëtonte bashkë me ata

dy të rinjtë që shihte se ç’bënin atje poshtë në

korije, --në korije ku pranvera qe harlisur

- 38 -

and bursting buds, the song of birds

innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet

growing things, and the sun caught like gold

in the tops of the trees; to see what they were

doing, walking along there so close together on

the path that was too narrow; walking along

there so close that they were always touching;

to watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing

the heart out of the spring. And a great

unseen chaperon, his spirit was there,

stopping with them to look at the little furry

corpse of a mole, not dead an hour, with his

mushroom-and-silver coat untouched by the

rain or dew; watching over Irene's bent head,

and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over

that young man's head, gazing at her so hard,

so strangely. Walking on with them, too,

across the open space where a wood-cutter

had been at work, where the bluebells were

trampled down, and a trunk had swayed

and staggered down from its gashed stump.

Climbing it with them, over, and on to the very

edge of the copse, whence there stretched an

undiscovered country, from far away in

which came the sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!'”

me kundërmimin e lëngut të drurëve dhe me

shpërthimin e mugujve, me këngën e zogjve

të panumërt, me një qelim zymbylash e

gjërash të ëmbla që po rriteshin dhe me

diellin që dukej si flori i dredhur majë

pemëve; që të shihte se ç’po bënin duke ecur

ngjitur njëri me tjetrin nëpër atë shteg shumë të

ngushtë, duke ecur aq ngjitur sa një e dy dhe e

çiknin njëri-tjetrin; që të shihte sytë e Irenës, si

hajdutë të zinj, tek vidhnin zemrën e pranverës.

Si një rojë shumë e kujdesshme dhe e

padukshme, shpirti i Swithinit ishte atje, me

ta; ai u ndal, si ata të dy, për të parë kufomën e

një urithi tërë qime, që kishte ngordhur nja dy

orë më parë, që as shiu dh as vesa nuk ia kishin

prishur ende petkun e tij ngjyrë kërpudhe si

prej ergjendi; ai pa se si e uli kokën Irena me

atë vështrim të ëmbël e përdëllimtar, ndërsa

djali i ri i kishte ngulur atë shikim të thellë e të

çuditshëm. Ai shkoi me ta bashkë përmes

zabelit, ku kishte qenë një druvar për të

bërë dru, ku zymbylat qenë shkelur me

këmbë dhe ku një trung druri qe rrëzuar

dhe kishte zënë udhën. Ai u ngjit me ta mbi

këtë trung, e kapërceu dhe vajti gjer në skajin e

kories, ku shtrihej një vend i panjohur dhe

nga vinte një tingull andej thellë: «Kuku,

kuku! »”

- 39 -

Translation Shifts

his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far shpirti i tij ziliqar prej Forsajti po udhëtonte

larg

into God-knows-what jungle of fancies nëpër kush e di se çfarë xhungële fantazish

the copse where the spring was running riot

with the scent of sap and bursting buds

korije ku pranvera qe harlisur me kundërmimin

e lëngut të drurëve dhe me shpërthimin e

mugujve

the song of birds innumerable me këngën e zogjve të panumërt,

a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things me një qelim zymbylash e gjërash të ëmbla që

po rriteshin

and the sun caught like gold in the tops of the

trees

dhe me diellin që dukej si flori i dredhur majë

pemëve

Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the

heart out of the spring

sytë e Irenës, si hajdutë të zinj, tek vidhnin

zemrën e pranverës

And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was

there,

Si një rojë shumë e kujdesshme dhe e

padukshme, shpirti i Swithinit ishte atje, me ta

with his mushroom-and-silver coat untouched

by the rain or dew

as shiu dh as vesa nuk ia kishin prishur ende

petkun e tij ngjyrë kërpudhe si prej ergjendi

the soft look of her pitying eyes me atë vështrim të ëmbël e përdëllimtar

gazing at her so hard, so strangely i kishte ngulur atë shikim të thellë e të

çuditshëm

across the open space where a wood-cutter had

been at work

përmes zabelit, ku kishte qenë një druvar për të

bërë dru,

where the bluebells were trampled down ku zymbylat qenë shkelur me këmbë

and staggered down from its gashed stump dhe ku një trung druri qe rrëzuar dhe kishte

zënë udhën

whence there stretched an undiscovered

country, from far away in which came the

sounds, 'Cuckoo-cuckoo!’

ku shtrihej një vend i panjohur dhe nga vinte

një tingull andej thellë: «Kuku, kuku!»

- 40 -

The translation shifts do illustrate how much Kokona is faithful to the source text, sometimes

adding in order to render the same meaning clearly , such as in the case: “his soul was there” vs

“shpirti i Swithinit ishte atje, me ta”; or “scent of sap and bursting buds” vs “e lëngut të drurëve

dhe me shpërthimin e mugujve”. Kokona is not only faithful to the source text, but also gives a

smooth literary touch to the translated target text, making it as interesting as the source text. A

harmonious texture of a landscape and social events is one of the most characteristic artistic,

aesthetic and stylistic attributes of the novel. The description of nature in this passage gives ur an

image of the love between Irene and Bosinney. Same as this nature seems as a paradise, same

their love is supposed to be; but same as there is a trunk had swayed and staggered down from its

gashed stump, same their love has its obstacles, and its future is unknown and undiscovered,

same as there stretched an undiscovered country at the very edge of the copse.

The leading role is ascribed to the images of the air, wind, light, space, motion and sounds,

which in most cases symbolize the concepts of Change and Transformation; stones, which

symbolize the Changelessness, Stagnations or Past; trees and earth as symbols of Rebirth and

Revival; also a special role in the novel belongs to the natural phenomena of wind and water,

which are raised to the status of the implicit symbols of Change.

Nature as a whole, natural phenomena, plants and animals are used to expose different images

that describe heroes’ characters and appearances: metaphors, epithets, similes, etc, which

contribute greatly to the development of the general imagery structure of the work.

The doubled case of exciting reversed parallel construction, chiasmus, even rouses the reader’s

sympathy to the personage of Old Jolyon:

They were excited--busy, as his heart was busy

and excited.

Drowsy, too, drowsy and drugged on honey

and happiness; as his heart was drugged and

drowsy. Summer--summer--they seemed

saying; great bees and little bees, and the flies

too!

Ato punonin plot shqetësim ashtu siç rrihte plot

shqetësim edhe zemra e tij.

Ato ishin si të përgjumura e të dehura nga

mjalti dhe lumturia, siç ishte e dehur dhe e

përgjumur zemra e tij. Verë…Verë dukeshin

sikur thoshin bletët e mëdha dhe bletët e vogla,

edhe mizat!

The parallel construction underlines his sudden emotions and observations:

- 41 -

What a revel of bright minutes! What a hum of

insects, and cooing of pigeons! It was the

quintessence of a summer day. Lovely!

Ç’ditë e bukur plotë dritë! Insektet

zhuzhullinin dhe pëllumbat guguronin. Këto

ishin çastet më të bukura të një dite vere!

Mrekulli!

We notice that thte parallel construction ‘What a revel of bright minutes! What a hum of insects,

and cooing of pigeons’ lost in the translated versionsince the way the sentences are constructed is

not same as in the source text.

What we understand is that the elements of Nature are an essential part of the novel, and

Nature’s frame is a complex cognitive structure, where every element of nature, be them animate

or inanimate, is associated with Human Emotions (positive and negative) and Human Features

(character and appearance).

4.3 Paganism in the novel

How deeply Galsworthy was attached to his father is known by the fact that modeled after him,

too, Old Jolyon, that fascinatingly depicted octogenarian in “ The Man of Property” and “The

Indian Summer of a Forsyte”. It was from his devotion to his father that Galsworthy put off his

marriage seven years till after his father’s death, the marriage which promised to be as happy as

any marital tie in the world. It is because the author believed in the moral kinship between father

and son so far as Galsworthy case is concerned, and that, when Galsworthy delineates his father

in his works, the son in him is outpouring through his father. It is said that Galsworthy was

extremely reticent about himself, but it is also believed that he never tells of anything but himself

in his works. So it might not be too daring to try to seek in his works a clue for knowing his

personality and the way this personality is transmitted to us through Vedat Kokona’s

distinguishable translation.

In his eighties, Old Jolyon, appreciates nature more than ever. When he watches flowers and

leaves, or listens to birds singing under the sunlit sky, nature almost makes his heart ache from

sheer love of it. He feels the beauty of nature slip away from him. As he knows he doesn’t have

many years ahead now to appreciate it, he becomes restless to think how little it will be that he

- 42 -

can enjoy the world and its beauty before he closes his eyes to it for good, without having

exhausted all his power to love it.

There is no way of becoming fresh and young again but yet he wishes if he could be young again

even though just for a day.

“And Old Jolyon thought: ‘Eighty-five! I

don’t feel it—except when I get that pain.’”

“Dhe plaku Xholion thoshte me vete:

«Tetëdhjetë e pesë vjeç! Dhe as që i ndiej

fare vitet, —veç kur më sëmbon këtu!»”

It looks as if there were something wrong with the power presiding over all life, or something in

the nature of justice torturing his soul.

His implicit protest against the feeling of common people is that they see no reason why an old

man craves for a pretty face to look at and love.

The Forsytes are not aware that even in a decrepit body might linger a yearning soul all the more

sensitive to beauty as it approaches to the end of its life’s journey. What the Forsytes think of is

only money and property, but with the passing of years this changed in Old Jolyon.

“The gloomy little study, with windows of

stained glass to exclude the view, was full of

dark green velvet and the heavily-carved

mahogany—a suite of which Old Jolyon was

wont to say: “Shouldn’t wonder if it made a bit

price someday!” It was pleasant to think that in

the after life he could get more for things that

he had given.

In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back

rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte, the

Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with

its white hair, against the cushion of his high-

backed seat, was spoiled by the moustache,

which imparted a somewhat military look to

“Studioja e vogël dhe e errët, me dritaret që i

kishin xhamat ngjyra-ngjyra dhe s’të linin të

shikoje tej për tej, ishte plot me mobilie prej

druri të kuq, të rëndë e të gdhendur, veshur me

kadife të gjelbër të mbyllët. Plaku Xholion

thoshte për këto mobilie: «Nuk është për t’u

habitur në qoftë se një ditë këto do të kushtojnë

shumë!» I vinte mirë kur mendonte se në të

ardhmen mund t’i shiste plaçkat më shtrenjtë

se ç’i kish blerë.

Në një atmosferë të ngrohtë e të errët, që është

karakteristike për të gjitha dhomat e shtëpive të

Forsajtëve, efekti rembrandtesk i kokës së tij të

madhe me leshëra të thinjura, kundrejt jastëkut

- 43 -

his face”.

të karriges me shpinëzë të lartë, prishej nga

mustaqet që i jepnin fytyrës së plakut një

pamje prej ushtaraku.”

The gloomy study and the stained glass windows show us not only how a Forsyte’s house is, but

also their inner side, they don’t even want to see the nature’s beauty, all they see is the money

value their properties have: “Shouldn’t wonder if it made a bit price someday!” It was pleasant to

think that in the after life he could get more for things that he had given”. We notice that the way

it is translated gives us a great hint on the Forsyte’s point of view about life, since “after life” is

translated as “ në të ardhmen”; for a Forsyte death was not taken into account, as if it didn’t even

exist.

“When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or

born, the Forsytes were present: when a

Forsyte died—but no Forsyte had as yet died;

they did not die; death being contrary to their

principles, they took precautions against it, the

instinctive precautions of highly vitalized

persons who resent encroachments on their

property”

“Kur një Forsajt fejohej, martohej ose lindte, të

gjithë Forsajtët ndodheshin në ngjarjen e

familjes; kur vdiste ndonjë Forsajt…por asnjë

Forsajt nuk kishte vdekur ende; Forsajtët nuk

vdisnin: vdekja ishte në kundërshtim me

parimet e tyre dhe, për këtë arsye, ata merrnin

masa kundër saj, masat instinctive të njerëzve

plot jetë e gjallëri, që nuk pranojnë t’u shpëtojë

nga dora e tyre.”

As we go on reading the story, we understand that even “life” from the Forsytes is considered as

a property. When their Aunt Ann, the oldest of the Forsytes, died, the Forsytes were resentful of

something, as a family, they had an instinct of being in contact with something strange and

unsafe thing, something which was beyond their power and command.

“Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back

and the dignity of her calm old face

personifying the rigid possessiveness of the

family idea.”

“Edhe teze Eni ishte aty; kurrizi i papërkulur

dhe pamja plot dinjitet e fytyrës së saj të

- 44 -

qetë e të plakur mishëronin frymën e rreptë të pronës në këtë familje.

The way Galsworthy describes Aunt Ann also underlines the fact that the Forsytes are obsessed

with the idea of the property, the inflexible back and dignity of her calm old face personify the

rigid possessiveness, and this is rendered in Albanian as “frymën e rreptë të pronës” so

accurately as to make the reader understand what is implied by “rigid possessiveness”.

“And all the unnumbered generations of his

yeoman ancestors, wont of a Sunday to stand

akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their

grey unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with

its hidden roots of violence, their instinct for

possession to the exclusion of all the world—

all these unnumbered generations seemed to sit

there with him on the top of the rise.”

Dhe të gjithë brezat e panumërt të

stërgjyshërve të tij fshatarë, që e kishin

zakon të rrinin të dielave me duart në ije duke

soditur ngastrat e vogla të tokave të tyre, me

ata sy të përhimë e të palëvizur që fshihnin

thellë instiktin e tyre të dhunës, instiktin e

zotërimit, që nuk qaste asnjë ndërhyrje nga

ana e botës së jashtme –të gjithë këta breza të

panumërt dukeshin sikur ishin ulur dhe po

rrinin me Suithinin majë asaj kodrine.”

What the author tells us in this passage is the other hint of showing the instinct of possession of

all the Forsytes, not only of the young generation, but even of their ancestors. An instinct with

hidden roots of violence which excluded the entire world, nothing else comes first for them

except their property.

Old Jolyon is not an emotional type of a man who can accomplish nothing in life but

simply waste what energy he has in sensual pleasures of life. A remarkable thing about him is

that, despite his nature susceptible to beautiful effects in nature, the impression he gives is that of

equanimity and sanity. There is nothing of weak-heartedness in him. He is a man of shrewd

practical sense, possessing a full share of the sense of property. He has never been influenced by

any opinion but his own, though he does not think otherwise than most people so often as to look

strange. Since that day he set up as a solicitor very early in his life, he has been dependent solely

upon his own exertions. Money can he not think of slightly. It is to him one of the most essential

factors which will make a well-ordered, delightful life possible for a man and his family. Thus

not only has he never been hard pressed for money, but amassed a considerable wealth.

- 45 -

Young people slave to gather possessions only to regret in old age that they have traded so much

of life away to gain them and must undergo the painful rigors of its redistribution through wills

after death.

He is different from the common snob in that with his sense of property is happily combined his

sensibility to the spiritual and aesthetic elements in life.

As a successful tea merchant he really worked in his manhood, worked harder than any of the

young pups of his later years. We see this in these paragraphs:

“He had worked at that business! Men did

work in those days! These young pups hardly

knew the meaning of the word. He had gone

into every detail, known everything that went

on, sometimes sat up all night over it. And he

had always chosen his agents himself, prided

himself on it. His eye for men, he used to say,

had been the secret of his success, and the

exercise of this masterful power of selection

had been the only part of it all that he had

really liked. Not a career for a man of his

ability.”

“Ai kishte punuar shumë në atë shoqëri.

Njerëzit punonin në ato kohë, jo shaka! Jo si

këta axhamitë e sotëm që s’ia dinë as kuptimin

fjalës punë! Ai hynte në të gjitha hollësitë,

ishte në dijeni të çdo gjëje dhe, nganjëherë, kur

e donte puna, rrinte gjithë natën zgjuar. Vetë i

kishte zgjedhur gjithmonë agjentët e vet dhe

për këtë mburrej. Mprehtësia e syrit të tij për të

zgjedhur njerëzit, siç thoshte, kishte qenë

sekreti i suksesit të tij dhe ushtrimi i kësaj

fuqie të madhe të zgjedhjes kishte qenë i vetmi

burim kënaqësie për të. Kjo nuk ishte një

karrierë për një njeri me aftësi të tillë.”

The way Kokona has translated the paragraph comes in Albanian so smoothly as if it were

actually written in Albanian, not translated. What we notice at first sight is that Kokona does not

make use very often of the word for word translation; instead he prefers to translate using

naturalization, harmonizing the sentences in the text and by using addition and stylemes.

For instance, “Men did work in those days” was translated as ‘Njerëzit punonin në ato kohë, jo

shaka! the added part “jo shaka” renders to the Albanian reader a clearer message of what the

author meant to say.

- 46 -

‘These young pups hardly knew the meaning of the word.” was rendered in Albanian as “Jo si

këta axhamitë e sotëm që s’ia dinë as kuptimin fjalës punë!” we notice that in English this

sentence is an indicative one, whilst in Albanian it is transformed into an exclamatory one, and

the epithet “young pups” is masterfully translated as “axhamitë e sotëm”, which is quite an

interesting example since an inexperienced translator might even have translated it as “të rinjtë e

sotëm”. The word “axhami” gives to the Albanian reader not only the idea of them being young,

but also inexperienced and not used to work.

He survived his tea trade, and sat for the directors’ board of several companies, of which he has

not yet given up all. The impression he gives is that of the typically Victorian type of

businessman, who has sought a fortune all his life and never been seriously concerned with the

spiritual side of human life. But, during more than half a century of his independent life, he has

learned and unlearned, put on himself and given up, so many things beyond material value. Same

as whiskers were outmoded; the robe of the orthodoxy was shed off his soul a long time ago.

Now that he is so well off and no longer chained to any material needs of the world, there remain

only three things to which he cannot but pay his homage—the sense of property, uprightness and

beauty. Of these three, the last tends to conquer his soul more and more nowadays. The sense of

property and uprightness hold far less power over him now, though they are by no means

forsaken idols for him yet. The upright conduct is the last testimony of the moral strength after

all the conventional doctrines have lost their prestige for him. The sense of property is related to

the most primeval of human instincts –the instinct of self-preservation, for the latter encourages a

man not only to fight for his own life but also to do his utmost in securing as comfortable living

conditions as possible for himself and his family. But having lived for more than half century

upon those two principles, he doesn’t need them anymore, as he is like a traveler reluctant to part

with wayside flowers, and birds, streams and clouds, and the golden shine upon them all.

“Somehow, to-day, he wanted company—

wanted a pretty face to look at. People treated

the old as if they wanted nothing. And with the

un-Forsytean philosophy which ever intruded

on his soul, he thought: ‘One’s never had

enough! With a foot in the grave one’ll want

“Për çudi, atë ditë ia donte zemra të kishte një

njeri pranë, ia kish ënda të shikonte një fytyrë

të bukur. Njerëzia venë me mendje se plaku

s’ka nevojë për asgjë. Dhe, me atë filozofinë jo

prej Forsajti, që ishte gjithmonë në shpirtin e

tij, ai mendonte: «Ne s’kënaqemi kurrë me atë

- 47 -

something, I shouldn’t be surprised!’ Down

here—away from the exigencies of affairs—his

grandchildren, and the flowers, trees, birds of

his little domain, to say nothing of sun and

moon and stars above them, said, “ Open,

sesame,” to him day and night. And sesame

opened—how much, perhaps, he did not know.

He had always been responsive to what they

had begun to call ‘Nature’, genuinely, most

religiously responsive, though he had never

lost his habit of calling a sunset a sunset and a

view a view, however deeply they might move

him. But nowadays Nature actually made him

ache, he appreciated it so.”

që kemi! Edhe atëherë kur je me një këmbë në

varr dëshiron diçka». Këtu, larg qytetit, larg

andrrallave të jetës, fëmijët e fëmijës, lulet,

drurët, zogjtë e pronës së tij të vogël dhe

sidomos dielli, hëna dhe yjet sipër tyre,

thoshin: «Hapu Sezam!» çdo ditë e çdo natë.

Dhe Sezami qe hapur—po se sa qe hapur, atë

plaku Xholion nuk e dinte. Ai e kishte ndier

gjithmonë në shpirtin e tij oshëtimën e asaj që

tani e quanin “natyrë”, sinqerisht e kish ndier

pothuaj me gjithë shpirt, ndonëse e kishte

quajtur gjithmonë perëndimin e diellit

perëndim dielli dhe panoramën panoramë, sado

thellë që mund ta kishin tronditur. Por sot ai e

ndiente kaq shumë natyrën sa ajo i shkaktonte

si një sëmbim në zëmër.”

It is quite understandable that Old Jolyon does not find pleasure on property anymore. And he

thinks that people treated the old as it they wanted nothing, “Ne s’kënaqemi kurrë me atë që

kemi! Edhe atëherë kur je me një këmbë në varr dëshiron diçka” also adding this way that

though he is old and maybe with a foot in the grave, there will always be something that he will

need, he’ll never have enough.

One day he met Irene, wife of his brother’s precious son Soames, or the man of property, as Old

Jolyon himself called him. She had left her husband’s house time before, after her lover’s tragic

death on a London street. The lover had been the fiancé of Old Jolyon’s beloved niece, June,

before he fell in love with Irene.

So the woman now standing in front of him and smiling with her head a little at one side had

ruined the happiness of his grandchild. But the fact did not prevent him from thinking on the

instant: “How pretty she is!” …. “Sa e bukur që është!”

- 48 -

The Forsytean philosophy decreeds that one should not love beauty more than reason, should

have one’s own way more than one’s own health. But the pleasure he derived from beauty now

was too alluring to him to keep himself away from it.

But the pleasure derived from beauty, for him was too alluring to keep him away from it. He

invited her for dinner, and then the next week they took a stroll in Kensington Garden, where

they had a conversation in the park about love:

“…… Did you ever love very deeply, Uncle

Jolyon?”…

‘If I had met you when I was young, I –I might

have made a fool of myself, perhaps.’ And a

longing to escape in generalities beset him.

“Love’s a queer thing,” he said, “fatal thing

often. It was the Greeks—wasn’t it?—made

love into a goddess; they were right, I dare say,

but they lived in the Golden Age.”

“Phil adored them.”

“Ah! There was a bit of the sculptor in him, I

fancy.”

“Yes. He loved balance and symmetry; he

loved the wholehearted way the Greeks gave

themselves to art. …. You’re of the Golden

Age, too, Uncle Jolyon. …. Phil thought so. He

used to say: ‘But I can never tell him that. I

admire him.’ ”

“ Keni dashuruar ndonjëherë me gjithë shpirt,

xha Xholion?

‘Sikur t’ju takoja kur isha i ri, unë…unë do të

kisha bërë ndoshta një marrëzi.’ Atë cast deshi

të fliste për gjëra të përgjithshme.

-Dashuria është një gjë e çuditshme, -tha ai.

–Shpesh diçka fatale. A s’ishin grekët ata që e

bënë dashurinë perëndeshë? Them se kishin të

drejtë, por ata jetonin në shekullin e artë.

-Fili i adhuronte ata.

-Besoj se kishte edhe pak talent skulptori.

-Kishte. I pëlqente ekuilibri dhe simetria. Ai i

donte grekët sepse ata i kushtoheshin artit

me mish e me shpirt. ....-Edhe ju jeni i shekullit

të artë, xha Xholion. …. –Ashtu mendonte Fili.

Ai thoshte gjithmonë: ‘nuk është e mundur t’i

them që më pëlqen shumë’.”

Old Jolyon remembered the chap had no balance at all; and the queer eyes of his, and high

cheek-bones—there was no symmetry in him. Irene’s lover the architect and Old Jolyon! One

was so ardently devoted to the ideal of balance and symmetry that he had lost the last bit of that

quality from his appearance, while the other was so balanced but never conscious of the ideal

embodied in himself. What an irony of human nature!

- 49 -

Old Jolyon had never loved to desperation, had always kept his balance and his sense of

symmetry.

“And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the

rise, he appeared to rule over this prospect--

remarkable--like some image blocked out by

the special artist, of primeval Forsytes in

pagan days, to record the domination of

mind over matter!”

“Dhe, ashtu në gjumë siç ishte, si një rojë

majë kodrinës, dukej sikur sundonte mbi

gjithë vendin rreth e rrotull, mbi këtë

panoramë «të mrekullueshme», si një figurë

e skalitur në gurë nga një artist pagan i

Forsajtëve të qëmotshëm, që do të

përjetësonte epërsinë e mendjes mbi

materien!”

All Forsytes wanted to rule over everything, even over nature, and as the author says they

wanted to dominate over the matter, and paganism is mentioned too.

But the power to admire beauty, which had been inherent to him, was now overpowering him.

The balance in him was endangered before the beauty of a woman.

As a Forsyte, he had never loved anything so desperately as Bosinney, Irene’s dead lover, did.

He had always kept a balance of life, never lost his sense of symmetry.

If the Forsytean way of life more or less stood for the Victorian tendency, it was only natural that

he should have impressed a casual observer as a typical Victorian rather than anything else.

But anyway he has not to fall under the category of the common type Victorian character,

because of his power to frequently see things all round as they were through an unprejudiced

eye; which enabled him to rise above his personal interest and from time to time to meditate

upon the deep meanings of life. What we notice is that his sense of beauty was never influenced

by any traditional idea of beauty; it was not awakened in him for the first time only after so many

years of his long career; had existed in him inherently, but had been counterbalanced by other

qualities as strongly inherent in him. His love of young life and beautiful form and color, was

what made him different from the other Forsytes. In the last days of his life, he even allowed his

passion for beauty to supersede his sense of property and to threaten to injure his sense of family

tie. He could liberate himself from all the conventionalisms of the age, and sometimes he could

think and feel almost as freely and naively as a man of the Gold Age.

- 50 -

Thus, as a conclusion, he was not affected by any of the contemporary ideas permeated by the

Christian ideologies. He was essentially a pagan. We see this pagan feature in him in his freedom

from all the social conventions and religious doctrines, something which marks Galsworthy’s

works also.

4.4 Allusions, idioms and similes

Culturally oriented translation studies emphasize the communicative nature of translation. The

source text (ST) and the target text (TT0 are not simply language; both occur in a given situation

in a given culture in the world, and each has a specific function. Allusions and idioms so

common in English are a case in point.

Allusions, idioms and similes are some of the most frequently stylistic devices used from the

author in depicting the characters.

One of the first allusions we encounter is the quilpish look:

…the tall George, son of the fifth Forsyte,

Roger, had a Quilpish look on his

fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests

…Xhorxhi i gjatë, djali i Forsajtit të pestë,

Roxherit, nga shprehja e ironisë që

pasqyrohej në fytyrën e tij të mbushur, dukej

sikur e bluante një nga ato shakatë e tij

sardonike.

“[…] Quilpish look on his fleshy face […] is translated as […] shprehja e ironisë që pasqyrohej

në fytyrën e tij të mbushur […]” …the allusion “Quilpish look”, taken from a character in “The

Old Curiosity Shop”(1841) by Charles Dickes, is lost when it is translated in albanian. The

character, Daniel Quilp, is a money lender who cheats people and is cruel to his wife; while these

characteristics are given through the allusion “quilpish look”, in Albanian it is simply given as

“shprehja e ironisë”. With these kinds of allusions we encounter the problem of untranslatability.

Same happens with “…Dundreary whiskers…”, which is translated as “…basetat, prerë, sipas

modes «Dëndriri»…”; this is a cultural element which cannot be translated simply like that,

because the Albanian readership wouldn’t understand it for sure, either it needs a footnote,

explaining how do dundreary whiskers look, or needs to be translated not just as a noun but as a

clause, where the translator would give a description of dundreary whiskers.

- 51 -

…his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds,

and a long, clean-shaven upper lip, were

framed within Dundreary whiskers.

…faqet e tij, tw prera nga dy rrudha paralele

dhe buza e sipwrme, e gjatw dhe e rruar, ishin

tw rrethuara nga basetat, prerw, sipas modws

«Dwndriri».

Another interesting allusion is that of “Buccaneer”:

George, on hearing the story, grinned. The hat

had obviously been worn as a practical joke!

He himself was a connoisseur of such. "Very

haughty!" he said, "the wild Buccaneer."

And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied

from mouth to mouth, till it became the

favourite mode of alluding to Bosinney.

Xhorxhi, kur e kishte dëgjuar këtë histori,

kishte bërë buzën në gaz me tallje. Me sa

dukej, fillip Bosini kish vënë atë kapetë për t’u

tallur! Atij vetë i pëlqenin shaka të tilla.

-Si shumë fodull Bukanieri i egër! – kish

thënë ai. Dhe fjala Bukanieri kaloi gojë më

gojë gjersa të gjithë zunë ta përdornin kur e

kishin fjalën për Bosinin.

Being a very interesting allusion, and also an important one, the translator has chosen not to

translate it, and has added a footnote explaining that Buccaneer is “pirat”.

Another cultural element is the word ‘dandy’:

"Er--how are you?" he said in his dandified

way, aspirating the 'h' strongly (this difficult

letter was almost absolutely safe in his

keeping)--"how are you?"

-Hëm…si vete? –Tha ai me një ton prej dendi,

duke theksuar fort gërmën «s» -Si vete?

In order to preserve the “dandified” way of talking, the translator translated it as “me një ton prej

dendi”, also including a footnote for to explain it, “Dandy (angl) – njeri sqimatar, spitullak.”

Idioms are also very important in “The Forsyte Saga”, because they are frequently used by

different characters. Personally, idioms are my favorite figures of speech in this nvel, since they

are very frequent, and because their translation in Albanian is so impressive and interesting.

- 52 -

… I made him bring every penny into

settlement, - lucky thing, too- they’d ha’had

nothing by this time!

Kur…unë e mësova burrin e saj t’i shtinte në

punë të hollat, gjer te qindarka dhe qe një fat I

madh, sepse tani do kishin mbetur në diell!

…I couldn’t help Irene’s having no money.

Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin

dancing attendance on her.

…edhe Irena nuk kishte para, po ç’ti bëja unë?

Somsit si pritej sa ta merrte; u tret si qiriri

duke pritur që të vendoste ajo.

This isn't real old Worcester. I s'pose Jolyon's

told you something about the young man.

From all I can learn, he's got no business, no

income, and no connection worth speaking

of; but then, I know nothing--nobody tells me

anything.

-Nuk është Vuster i vërtetë. Besoj se Xholioni

do t’ju ketë thënë diçka për djalin e ri. Me

ç’kam marrë vesh, ai është pa punë, të ardhura

s’ka, s’ka as farë, as fis për të qënë, por unë

s’di asgjë, se asnjëri s’më thotë ndonjë gjë.

"Thinner? I'm in good case," he said, leaning

a little forward, "not one of your thread-

papers like you!"

-Të dobësohem? Jam shumë mirë kështu, -

tha ai duke u përkulur pak përpara. –S’jam

skorrë si ju!

I'm very well in myself," proceeded James,

"but my nerves are out of order. The least

thing worries me to death.

-Jam shumë mirë kështu siç jam, - vazhdoi

Xhejmsi, - por me nervat nuk jam mirë. Për

gjënë më të vogël mërzitem e bëhem helm e

pikë.

"You're all alike: you won't be satisfied till

you've got what you want. If you must come to

grief, you must; I wash my hands of it." So,

he had washed his hands of it, making the

condition that they should not marry until

Bosinney had at least four hundred a year.

-Që të gjithë njëlloj jeni: kënaqeni vetëm

atëherë kur keni atë që doni. Në do të marrësh

veten në qafë, mere! Unë i laj duart për

hesapin tim. Edhe kështu ai i kishte larë

duart dhe kishte vënë si kusht që ata nuk do të

martoheshin gjersa Bosini të fitonte të paktën

katërqind stërlina në vit.

A bad business! He had no notion of giving

her a lot of money to enable a fellow he knew

nothing about to live on in idleness. He had

seen that sort of thing before; no good ever

came of it. Worst of all, he had no hope of

Punë e keqe! Ai nuk kishte aspak ndërmend

t’i jepte asaj një prikë të madhe duke i dhënë

rast kështu një djali të botës, për të cilin s’dinte

asgjë, që ta kalonte kohën duke bërë pallë.

Diçka të tillë e kishte parë edhe më parë dhe e

- 53 -

shaking her resolution; she was as obstinate as

a mule, always had been from a child. He

didn't see where it was to end. They must cut

their coat according to their cloth. He would

not give way till he saw young Bosinney with

an income of his own. That June would have

trouble with the fellow was as plain as a

pikestaff; he had no more idea of money

than a cow. As to this rushing down to Wales

to visit the young man's aunts, he fully

expected they were old cats.

dinte që s’qe gjë e mirë. Më e keqja qe se ai

s’kishte shpresë t’ia mbushte mendjen Xhunit

që të hiqte dorë nga vendimi që kishte marrë;

ajo qe kokëfortë si mushka, ashtu kishte qenë

që në vogëli. As ai s’e dinte si do të

përfundonte kjo punë! Ata duhej të shtrinin

këmbët sa kishin jorganin. Ai do të dorëzohej

vetëm atë herë kur të shihte se Bosini kishte të

ardhurat e veta. Që Xhuni do të kishte avaze

me atë djalë s’kishte pikë dyshimi: më sa

merr vesh lopa nga paratë aq merrte vesh

edhe ai! Sa për këtë udhëtimtë rrëmbyer për në

Uells për të vizituar tezet e të fejuarit, Plaku

Xholion ishte shumë i bindur se ato do të shin

ca mace të plakura e asgjë tjetër.

The idea of supposing that young cub

Soames could give him advice! He had always

been a cub, with his nose in

the air! He would be setting up as a man of

property next, with a place

in the country! A man of property! H'mph!

Çudi, ku i kish vajtur në mendje Xhejmsit t’i

thoshte se Somsi, ende këlysh, munt t’i jepte

këshillë. Këlysh kishte qenë ai gjithmonë, me

atë hundë përpjetë! Pastaj do të hiqej si

pronar me një vilë jashtë qytetit! Si pronar!

Posi!

The fellow was sharper than he had thought,

and better-looking than he had hoped. He had

a--a 'don't care' appearance that James, to

whom risk was the most intolerable thing in

life, did not appreciate; a peculiar smile, too,

coming when least expected; and very queer

eyes.

Djali i ri qe më mendjehollë se ç’kish pandehur

ai dhe më i pashëm se ç’ia merrte mendja.

Kishte pamjen e një njeriu që thotë «ku

rrafsha mos u vrafsha», pamje që s’i pëlqënte

aspak Xhejmsit, i cili çdo gjë mund të duronte

në jetë, përveç rrezikut. Xhejmsit nuk i pëlqeu

gjithashtu as ajo nënqeshja e tij e veçantë që

shfaqej pikërisht atëherë kur nuk e prisje aspak.

He would, however, let Timothy have a bit of

his mind, and see if he would go on dropping

Sidoqoftë, do të vente te Timothi, që t’i thoshte

se ç’mendonte e të shihte a do të hiqte dorë ai

- 54 -

hints! And he would not let the grass grow

under his feet either, he would go there at

once, and take very good care that he didn't

have to go again on the same errand.

nga ato fjalë që hidhte herë pas here! Dhe nuk

do ta shtynte këtë punë me sot me nesër, por

do të vente atje menjëherë, dhe do të kishte

kujdes që të mos qe nevoja të shkonte për së

dytu për të njëjtën gjë.

Similies are very frequent in the novel and most of the times the author compares the characters

with animals and uses nature in order to create similies.

Then he caught sight of her face, so white and

motionless that it seemed as though the blood

must have stopped flowing in her veins; and

her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great,

wide, startled brown eyes of an owl.

Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa

cushions, she had a strange resemblance to a

captive owl, bunched in its soft feathers against

the wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her

figure was gone, as though she had been

broken by cruel exercise; as though there were

no longer any reason for being beautiful, and

supple, and erect.

Pastaj i vështroi fytyrën, që ishte aq e bardhë

dhe si e ngrirë sa dukej sikur gjaku nuk lëvrinte

më në rrembat e saj; i vështroi edhe sytë që

dukeshin shumë të mëdhenj si sytë e

zgurdulluar e të lebetitur të një kukuvajke.

E tulitur në peliçen e saj ngjyrë hiri te jastëkët

e kanapesë, Irena i shëmbëllente për çudi me

një kukuvajkë me tufa puplash të buta të

pështetur pas telave të kuvlisë. Trupi i saj,

sikur qe thyer nga një ushtrim mizor, e kishte

humbur zhdërvjelltësinë e bukurinë e

dikurshme, sikur të mos kish më asnjë arsye

për të qënë i bukur, i zhdërvjellët dhe i drejtë.

She had come back like an animal wounded to

death, not knowing where to turn, not knowing

what she was doing.

Ajo qe kthyer si një kafshë që është plagosur

për vdekje, se s’dinte ku të vente, se s’dinte

ç’të bënte.

Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that

is shot and dying, whose poor breast you see

panting as the air is taken from it, whose

poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a

slow, soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all

Ai e vështroi prapë Irenën, të tulitur si një zog i

plagosur, që është duke dhënë shpirt, me atë

kraharor të shkretë që ulet e ngrihet ndërsa

merr frymë me gulçim, që vështron me ata sy

të perënduar atë që e ka vrarë, me një shikim të

- 55 -

that is good--of the sun, and the air, and its

mate.

qetë e të ëmbël që i lë lamtumirën çdo gjëje të

mirë në këtë botë: diellit, ajrit dhe shoqes së

tij.

Many times the author uses similes to compare the Forsytes with an artist, or animals:

Like an artist for ever seeking to discover the

significant trifle which embodies the whole

character of a scene, or place, or person, so

those unconscious artists--the Forsytes had

fastened by intuition on this hat; it was their

significant trifle, the detail in which was

embedded the meaning of the whole matter…

Si një artist që kërkon gjithmonë të zbulojë një

vogëlsi kuptimplotë që do të mishërojë gjithë

karakterin e një skene, ose të një vendi, ose të

një njeriu, ashtu edhe Forsajtët, që ishin artistë

pa e ditur, ishin kapur fort pas kësaj kapele;

kjo ishte për ta ajo vogëlsi kuptimplotë,

hollësia në të cilën që fshehur kuptimi i gjithë

çështjes…

… they had taken arms against a common

peril. Like cattle when a dog comes into the

field, they stood head to head and shoulder to

shoulder, prepared to run upon and trample the

invader to death.

...ata ishin armatosur atë ditë kundër rrezikut të

përbashkët. Si ato bagëtitë, kur një qen hyn

në vathë, edhe ata rrinin kokë më kokë dhe

sup më sup, gati për t’iu versulur armikut dhe

për ta shkelur me këmbë gjersa të jepte shpirt.

…with his nose, like the nose of a sheep, fastened

to the pasture on which he browsed…

…hunda e tij, si ajo e deleve, qe lidhur atje ku

kulloste.

It is so interesting to read the novel in Albanian since every idiom, allusion, simile and every

other figure of speech is rendered with a corresponding figure of speech in such a way that there

are no losses in the target text.

- 56 -

Chapter 5

5.1 Principles of Correspondence

“Whoever takes upon himself to translate contracts a

debt; to discharge it, he must pay it with the

same money,

but the same sum”

(Costance B.West)

Since no two languages are identical, either in the meanings given to corresponding symbols

or in the ways in which such symbols are arranged in phrases and sentences, it stands to

reason that there can be no absolute correspondence between languages. Hence there can be

no fully exact translations. The total impact of a translation may be reasonably close to the

original, but there can be no identity in detail. Constance B.West (1932:344) clearly states

the problem: “Whoever takes upon himself to translate contracts a debt; to discharge it; he

must pay not with the same money, but the same sum.” One must not imagine that the

process of translation can avoid a certain degree of interpretation by the translator. In fact,

as D.G.Rossetti stated in 1874 (Fang 1953), “A translation remains perhaps the most direct

form of commentary.”

No statement of the principles of correspondence in translating can be complete

without recognizing the many different types of translations (Herbert P.Phillips

1959).

Traditionally, we have tended to think in terms of free or paraphrastic translations as contrasted

with close or literal ones, but there are many more grades of translating than these extremes

imply. There are such translations which involve highly concordant relationships, e.g. the same

source-language word is always translated by one—and only one—receptor-language word.

- 57 -

Others may be quite devoid of artificial restrictions in form, but nevertheless may be over

traditional and even archaizing.

Some translations aim at very close formal and semantic correspondence, but are generously

supplied with notes and commentary. Many are not so much concerned with giving information

as with creating in the reader something of the same mood as was conveyed by the original.

Differences in translations can generally be accounted for thee basic factors in translating: (a) the

nature of the message, (b) the purpose of the author, by proxy, of the translator, and (c) the type

of audience.

The purposes of the translator are the primary ones to be considered in studying the types of

translation which result, the principal purposes that underlie the choice of one or another way to

render a particular message are important. The primary purpose of the translator may be

information as to both content and form; one intended type of response towards such an

informative type of translation might be largeky cognitive, but alse a largely informative

translation may be designed to elicit an emotional response to pleasure from the reader or

listener.

A trasnlator’s purposes may involve much more than information. He may, for example, want to

suggest a particular behavior by means of translation. So he may adapt the target text in order to

aim a meaningful translation.

A greater degree of adaptation is likely to occur in a translation which has an imperative purpose.

Here the translator feels constrained not merely to suggest a possible line of behavior, but to

make such an action explicit and compelling. He is not content to translate in such a way that the

people are likely to understand; rather he insists thar the translation must be so clear that no one

can possible misunderstand.

An easy and natural style in translating, despite the extreme difficulties producing it—especially

when translating an original of high quality—is nevertheless essential to producing in the

ultimate receptors a response similar to that of the original receptors. In one way or another this

principle of ‘similar response” has been widely held and effectively stated by a number of

specialists in the field of translating.

- 58 -

“A translation should affect us in the same way as the original may be supposed to have affected

its first hearers”.9 Despite Arnold’s objection to some of the freer translations done by others, he

was at least strongly opposed to the literalist views of such persons as F.W.Newman (1861).

Jowett (1891), on the other hand, comes somewhat closer to the present-day conception of

“similar response” in stating that: “an English translation ought to be idiomatic and interesting,

nto only to the scholar, but to the learned reader…. The translator … seeks to produce on his

reader an impression similar or nearly to that produced by the original.”

5.2 Translation as the Trial of the foreign

“A Translator is severely criticized if he makes a mistake,

but only faintly praised when he succeeds” (Nida 1964: 155)

Translation is the trial of the foreign (épreuve de l’étranger)10

; in a double sense. In the first

place, it establishes a relationship between the Self-Same (Propre) and the Foreign by aiming to

open up the foreign work to us in its utter foreignness. In the second place, translation is a trial

for the Foreign as well, since the foreign work is uprooted from its own language-ground. And

this trial, often an exile, can also exhibit the most singular power of the translating act: to reveal

the foreign work’s most original kernel, its most deeply buried, most self-same, but equally the

most “distant” from itself. Alain addressed the topic of translation in one of his remarks on

literature:

I have this idea that one can always translate a poet—English, Latin,

or Greek—exactly word for word, without adding anything,

preserving the very order of the words, until at last you find the meter,

even the rhymes. I have rarely pushed the experiment that far; it takes

time, I mean, a few months, plus uncommon patience. The first draft

9 Arnold, Matthew, quoted in “Savory”, 1957

10 Berman, Antoine, “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, translated by Lawrence Venuti.

- 59 -

resembles a mosaic of barbarisms; the bits are badly joined; they are

cemented together, but not in harmony. A forcefulness, a flash, a

certain violence remains, no doubt more than necessary. It’s more

English than the English text, more Greek than the Greek, more Latin

than the Latin […]

(Alain 1934:56–7)

Thanks to such translation, the language of the original shakes with all its liberated might the

translating language. In an article devoted to Pierre Klossowski’s translation of the Aeneid,

Michel Foucault distinguishes between two methods of translation:

It is quite necessary to admit that two kinds of translations exist; they do

not have the same function or the same nature. In one, something

(meaning, aesthetic value) must remain identical, and it is given passage

into another language; these translations are good when they go “from

like to same” […] And then there are translations that hurl one language

against another […] taking the original text for a projectile and treating

the translating language like a target. Their task is not to lead a meaning

back to itself or anywhere else; but to use the translated language to

derail the translating language.

(Foucault 1969:30)

Doesn’t this distinction simply correspond to the great split that divides the entire field of

translation, separating so-called “literary” translations (in the broad sense) from “non literary”

translations (technical, scientific, advertising, etc.)? Whereas the latter perform only a semantic

transfer and deal with texts that entertain a relation of exteriority or instrumentality to their

language, the former are concerned with works, that is to say texts so bound to their language

that the translating act inevitably becomes a manipulation of signifiers, where two languages

enter into various forms of collision and somehow couple.

- 60 -

Readers often perceive the end-product of translation (i.e target text,TT) as the only material

available for scrutiny. This tendency to ignore the process of the decision making lies behind the

lack of objectivity in translation assessment. Thus, any attempt to evaluate translations by

analytic comparison of source text (ST) and target text (TT) is bound to divert away from

accuracy without considering the procedures undertaken by the translator to resolve the problems

(Hatim and Mason 1990: 3).

The ST writer selects lexical items and syntactic arrangement to suit his communicative aims.

The translator works at recovering those aims, something that we will discuss about on the

following part. But this process is fraught with subjective interpretation of ST. After all, every

reading of a text is unique in its own right and is bound to evoke different responses.

As we see , the wheel of experience better illustrates the process of translation and makes us

understand how a text is unique and is perceived differently from every translator. Based on their

own intuition, instinct, creativity, their experience in reading, studies, travelling, and all the other

specific elements mentioned below, the translators create their own experience, their own way of

perceiving things, of understanding the text, elaborating it and then rendering the same meaning

in the translated version.

- 61 -

“All translations could have been better than they are, most could have been worse”11

(John Sturrock)

As House (1981:64) describes it, “it seems unlikely that translation quality assessment can even

be objectified in the manner of natural science.” As there is neither a definitive reading of a text,

nor a perfect rendering which achieves the goals of ST, translation assessment and criticism

could go on forever.

Indeed, Robinson wrote:

“A non-translator (especially a monolingual reader in the target language who directly or

indirectly pays for the translation – a client, a book-buyer) thinks and talks about the translation

from outside the process, not knowing how it is done, but knowing a good translation when s/he

sees one.

A translator thinks and talks about translation from inside the process, knowing how it’s done,

possessing a practical real-world sense of the problems, and the limitations on those solutions.”

12

11

Sturrock, John. “The translator’s Handbook”, edited by Catriona Picken, p.75, 1989. 12

Robinson, Douglas. “Becoming a Translator: An Accelerated Course”, London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

- 62 -

Conclusions

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

Ezra Pound

1885-1972, American Poet, Critic

In order for the reader to have in his hands a high quality translated work of art, the translator has

to do not only a professional work in it, but also should devote all hir/her passion into it.

Assessing this piece of work I would say was a great pleasure.

John Galsworthy spent a lot of time to write “The Man of Property” and devoted all his heart to

it. In the beginning, in the exposition of the novel, he uses a wide variety of epithets and

metaphors, similes, allusions, repetition, inversion, etc., in describing the characters. I analysed

the way all these devices and figures of speech were rendered in Albanian, whether there was a

loss of them of it they were translated faithfully.

What Kokona has implied not a word for word translation, many times he takes upon himself the

risk to change the whole sentence’s form for to render the same meaning, such as in this case:

He had a--a 'don't care' appearance Kishte pamjen e një njeriu që thotë «ku rrafsha

mos u vrafsha»

So, extraordinary, my dear--so odd Një gjë shumë e çuditshme, besa, sa të merrte

gazi kur e shihje!

We find in Galsworthy a definite musical charm catching and keeping the hidden feelings. His

intuition is so infallible that he can content himself with a slight allusion and a broken hint. But

then there is Galsworthy’s irony, such a singular instrument that even the tone separates him

from any other writer. Sometimes Galsworthy makes nature herself take part in that ironic play

about human beings, to underline the bitterness or sweetness of the incidents with the help of

winds, clouds, fragrances, and bird cries.

Vedat Kokona has translated the entire book so masterfully, and in such a natural way that it

seems as if it were originally written in Albanian.

All the epithets and metaphors and every other stylistic device was carefully chosen, not only for

to render the same meaning or for to be faithful to the source text, but also was chosen so

- 63 -

carefully for not to be repetitive when it was not necessary, for to make the translation be more

interesting, having many stylemes.

The aim of this translation assessment was not to find flaws in the translated version but rather to

analyze the methods Kokona has used in translating, to study the target text as a whole,

understand how the translator reasons while translation such a great work of art.

It is true that everyone can read a book, but not everyone can understand it sometimes. And that

is the case with understanding and analysing the work that the translator had to do for to reach in

this final product.

For to be a good translator, I think we shall analyse and study the great works of arts such as

“The Forsyte Saga” is, as who better than another translator can understand the tiring but also

rewarding work of a translator.

As I stated in the beginning of this thesis, our country lacks high quality translated books

nowadays, so what we can do, at least, is try to read as much as possible, to enter in the

translator’s mind and understand how he/she overcame all the difficulties in translating, and of

course to learn from them.

And since every translation also depends upon the trasnlators’ experience, the best we can do is

to try to profit from translators such as Vedat Kokona for to lern from their experiences, and later

on why not to start retranslating the great pieces of art of the great foreign authors, and why not

try to create a new approach towards translation assessment and its benefits.

- 64 -

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Procedures”, Journal des Traducteurs, URL: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/001878ar

2. Amos, Flora Ross. “Early Theories of Translation”, New York, 1973.

3. Coates. H.R. “John Galsworthy as a Dramatic Artist” New York, 1926.

4. Davies, S.H, M.A. “Galsworthy the Craftsman/ Studies in the Original Manuscripts of the

Forsyte Chronicles”.

5. Dupont, V. “John Galsworthy : The dramatic Artist”, Paris, 1942.

6. Follett, Helen Thomas and Wilson. “Some Modern Novelists: Appreciations and

Estimations”, New York, 1918.

7. Galsworthy, John. “The Forsyte Saga 1”, “The Man of Property”, Heineman: London,

1922.

8. Garnett, Edward. “Letters from John Galsworthy 1900-1932”, London, 1934.

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“erën” e Francës, 2010.

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