The groundwork of literary stylization: genre, style, and cultural pragmatics

The purpose of the best aesthetically valid translation of a poetic work can be best achieved through stylization. From the linguistic point of view stylisation is “an imitation of a manner, or narrative style, etc, typical of some genre, social milieu, time in history, etc, usually aiming at creating an impression of authenticity” (Akhmanova, 1969). Normally a writer, aiming at creating the said effect, never tries to reproduce an exhaustive set of the peculiar genre features of imitated text, but thinks in terms of the “necessary and sufficient” amount of conceptually and linguistically specific features bearing the main load in creating a particular effect. A researcher, whose task is to reveal these features, should probably begin by making a complete list of stylistic devices used by the author, and then consider their relative functional significance in producing a desired impact. The results of such study appear to be of a high practical value for a translator, who invariably faces the problem of the balance between conceptually significant elements and emotional-expressive “decorators”.