Diminutives as Linguistically Relevant Personal Indexes in Mikhail Bulgakov’s Novel The Master and Margarita and Their Rendering in Translation

Abstract

The article deals with one of the most complicated aspects of the theory of artistic translation, i.e. recreation of the speech portrayal of a literary character in another language and within a different culture underlying it. The material under analysis is Mikhail Bulgakov’s landmark novel The Master and Margarita and two of its widely acknowledged translations produced by Michael Glenny (1967) and Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1997). The text of the novel abounds with lexical diminutives of all kinds, which enabled us to put forward a hypothesis that diminutives underlie and inform the complex multilayer system of the characters of the novel and their speech portrayals. Thus, diminutiveness is viewed as a linguistically relevant personal index. The research has shown that within the framework of the novel, expressive diminutives possess a large indexical capacity to identify and typify the characters as ‘us’ and ‘them’ as well as provide a rich source of humour and comic relief for those characters who, like Woland’s entourage or the narrator himself, are good at changing masks and voices when confronted with ‘them’. Due to the asymmetry of the Russian and English morphological systems, consistent recreation of the characters’ speech portrayals based on lexical diminutives, does not seem possible in translation, which does not preclude, however, occasionally finding excellent translation solutions.

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