Time perspective in translated narrative (in the translations of A. Burgess’ novel “A clockwork orange” into the Slavic languages)

The article examines the effect of cinematography in the translations of A. Burgess’s novel “A Clockwork Orange”, achieved by changing the grammatical tense of the narrative. In the existing translations of the novel into Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish, the translators conveyed the past tense of the original text in different ways, often alternating it with the present tense of the target language, thus allowing the reader to “perceive” the events of the novel as contemporary to the moment of reading, i.e. experienced directly by the reader. The memories shown through the mediation of the narrator are pushed into the background of the narrative, at the same time creating a compositional framework for a more relevant narrative. The present tense forms are designed, in turn, to bring the events described closer to the moment of perception, which allows to shift the focus of the narrative, giving the reader the opportunity to take the place of the main character, to look at the screen with their own eyes, to bring the events of the past closer to the present. The contrasting alternation of multitemporal verb forms (including perfective and imperfective past tense forms), as well as the introduction of an additional point of reference within the plot tense using active participles, allows to further deepen the temporal perspective of the narrative, make the events of the novel more vivid and visual in the reader’s perception. The analyzed variants of translations into Slavic languages have demonstrated the connection between the choice of the main morphosyntactic means of constructing a narrative not only with the individual preferences of translators, but also with national traditions in the field of translation.