Semantic portrait of Wainamoinen in English translations of “Kalevala”

Abstract

The article presents a comparative analysis of the semantic portraits of the singer and the cultural hero Wainamoinen in two English translations of the epic “Kalevala” made by William Forsell Kirby and John Martin Crawford. Following a certain algorithm, the different-structured nominations of the hero are classified and subjected to component analysis, through which an inventory of semes and semes’ specifiers is fixed, which allows to identify isomorphic and allomorphic characteristics in the portraits of the hero. The study shows that the dominant position in the semantic portrait of Wainamoinen is occupied by the so-called song space of the hero, since singing is the main activity of Wainamoinen by means of which he influences the surrounding world. The semantic portrait of Wainamoinen is a four-level structure, including nominations (1) characterizing him as a singer, (2) characterizing his singing, (3) characterizing the process of his singing and (4) characterizing functions of his singing. The study also demonstrates an importance of nominations which have the structure of a sentence and super-phrasal unity. They allow to fix additional semes in lexical nominations. The article concludes that the semantic allomorphs of Wainamoinen’s portrait characteristics are determined by both linguistic aspects (the choice of the source text for translation: original text in the Finnish language and the interlinear translation in German) and extralinguistic aspects: differences between British and American lingua cultures and personal preferences of each translator.

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