Means of Creating a “Cinematic” Ef fect in the Czech, Serbian and Croatian Translations of A. Burgess’s Novel “A Clockwork Orange”

The article examines a fragment of the novel “A Clockwork Orange” by A. Burgess (Part II, Chapter 4) and its translations into Czech, Serbian, and Croatian. The article focuses on the linguistic devices used to create the effect of so-called “cinematic effect” – i.e. formation of a dynamic observation situation within the text. This effect is realized at the level of vocabulary, grammar, and textual composition. Key techniques used to achieve this effect in the novel are examined. These include the use of perceptual vocabulary (verbs of sight and hearing, onomatopoeia) and strategies for shifting focalization through person and tense. These techniques are retained to varying degrees in all translations of the novel. The temporal organization of the translations largely corresponds to the original, with its contrast between the present and the past. The Serbian text, however, makes extensive use of the aorist to discursively highlight key and unexpected events, while the Croatian translation omits the opposition between aorist and perfect. The Czech and Croatian translations retain, as much as possible, constructions with the second-person pronoun, corresponding to the English you, activating the narrator’s dialogue with the reader, while in the Serbian translation these constructions are often replaced by are often replaced by indefinite- personal constructions, which diminishes the immediacy of interaction with the reader. Thus, in the translations of the text into Slavic languages, we observe either adherence to the author’s strategy (e.g., in contrasting the temporal planes of the past and present or in shifting the vantage point) or the introduction of alternative oppositions relevant only to the translated narrative (in the Serbian translation, this is the opposition between the aorist and perfect in the past).