Vertimo studijos eISSN 2029-7033

2023, vol. 16, pp. 29–44 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15388/VertStud.2023.2

Diachronic Research into Translation Norms: The Case of Literary Discourse

Karolina Butkuvienė
Šiauliai Academy
Vilnius University
karolina.butkuviene@sa.vu.lt
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8959-6936

Lolita Petrulionė
Šiauliai Academy
Vilnius University
lolita.petrulione@sa.vu.lt
https://orcid.org/000-0002-1201-5379

Abstract. The article addresses the issue of the translation of fiction in different periods of time under the influence of various linguistic, social and cultural norms, and it aims to establish differences in the use of translation strategies employed by the translator. The paper reviews the descriptive approach in Translation Studies which argues that translation is a communicative as well as social act where the translator alone is not responsible for his/her translational behaviour; other people and institutions also contribute to the formation of common notions of translational behaviour, and these are termed norms, conventions or rules. Moreover, the research emphasizes that norms are not a stable phenomenon and may vary across different periods of time and across different cultures or communities. The research is based on the contrastive analysis of two translations of Jack London’s Martin Eden with the aim to establish differences in the use of translation strategies under the influence of translation norms.
Keywords: translation, norms, conventions, rules, descriptive approach.

Diachroninis vertimo normų tyrimas literatūros diskurso pavyzdžiu

Santrauka. Straipsnyje analizuojamos grožinės literatūros vertimo problemos skirtingais laikotarpiais ir siekiama nustatyti, kaip skiriasi vertėjų taikytos vertimo strategijos veikiant įvairioms lingvistinėms, socialinėms ir kultūrinėms normoms. Tyrime pasitelktas aprašomasis vertimo studijų metodas, kai vertimas suprantamas kaip komunikacinis ir socialinis aktas, dažnai lemiantis, kad vertimo sprendimus vertėjai priima paklusdami vadinamosioms normoms, konvencijoms ar taisyklėms. Be to, straipsnyje pabrėžiama, jog normos yra kintantis reiškinys, priklausantis nuo laikotarpio, skirtingų kultūrų ir bendruomenių. Atlikta gretinamoji dviejų Jack’o London’o Martinas Idenas vertimų analizė leido nustatyti, kaip veikiant tam tikro meto vertimo normoms skyrėsi romano vertėjos taikytos vertimo strategijos.
Pagrindiniai žodžiai: vertimas, normos, konvencijos, taisyklės, aprašomasis metodas.

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Copyright © 2023 Karolina Butkuvienė, Lolita Petrulionė. Published by Vilnius University Press
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Introduction

This paper presents a discussion of important translation issues in literary discourse with a particular emphasis on translation norms across time and cultures. The fact that language is considered to be part of culture leads to the assumption that it is often shaped by that culture. For this reason, translations, with respect to cultural approaches in Translation Studies, are assumed to be products of the target culture where translation is viewed as a norm-governed process in which norms have impact on the translator’s specific decision. The aim of the research is to determine the differences in the use of translation strategies under the influence of translation norms through a contrastive analysis of two translations of Jack London’s Martin Eden into the Lithuanian language. The first translation was done by Silvija Lomsargytė in 1964. The latest retranslation/revision was completed by the same person in 2020.

Translation norms are not a constant phenomenon, but change depending on social, political and cultural situation (see Toury 1995, 1999; Hermans 1996). Therefore, it is expected that one and the same literary piece translated in different periods of time will manifest not only particular linguistic norms but also changing social and cultural values. Although the issue of translation norms has been discussed a great deal by the linguists such as Gideon Toury (1995, 1999), Theo Hermans (1996), Christiane Nord (1991), Andrew Chesterman (1993), Ieva Zauberga (2006), Mette Hjort (1992), Christina Schäffner (2010) and others, the diachronic research into the phenomenon is rather limited. In terms of English-Lithuanian language pair, the number of studies into the subject is even more modest. On the other hand, it is not that Lithuanian researchers have altogether ignored contrastive translation studies as an area of their research. In 2021, Aurelija Leonavičienė analyzed translation of proper nouns during the interwar and soviet periods in Lithuania. Additionally, she provided a thorough overview of contrastive translation research, spanning from the earliest works completed by Valdas Petrauskas (1977) to the recent presentations in scientific conferences. Notably, changes in norms for literary translation in Lithuania since 1990 have captured the particular interest of Milda Danytė. She observed “a weakening in two norms that were once very significant during the Soviet period,” i.e. the grammatical and phonological adaptation of proper names and the usage of footnotes (Danytė 2008: 56).

When discussing contrastive research involving two translations of the same literary piece of fiction, scientists usually focus on the ones carried out by different translators. However, in minor languages or smaller translation markets such as Lithuanian, it is often challenging to find the same book translated twice. In the 20^th century, Lithuania underwent various historical, social and cultural developments, and the Lithuanian language changed considerably as well. These phenomena triggered shifts in translation norms leading to a significant number of books needing revisions or retranslations. A diachronic aspect of research may reveal that revisions or retranslations completed by the same person but at different periods of time will demonstrate the changes in translational behaviour, while translations done by different individuals will manifest individual tendencies.

Theoretical Insights into Translation and Norms

In the history of modern Translation Studies, until the 1970s, the prescriptive approach prevailed and its main focus was on formulating certain generalizations of what an ideal translation should be. The new direction of Descriptive Translation Studies, which appeared in the 1970s with its most prominent figure Gideon Toury, focused on the description of existing translations, their functions and the translation process itself, as well as on formulating generalizations not limited to individual texts but ones applied to large bodies of translated works (Holmes 1988: 71, as cited in Vaičenonienė 2011: 16).

According to the representatives of the descriptive approach, translation, as Siobhan Brownlie indicates, is not only a communicative act, but also a social one. It involves shared ways of behaviour, which are motivated by common ways of thinking. This means that the translator alone cannot be solely responsible for his/her behaviour as other individuals like editors, publishers, and readers also play a role in the translation process. Together they contribute to the formation of common notions of translational behaviour, which are termed conventions, norms or rules (Brownlie 1999: 7). With reference to Toury, it can be argued that translation is a norm-governed activity and is a significant feature of the cultural turn in Translation Studies highlighting that translation is a kind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and two cultural traditions, that is, at least two sets of norm systems on each level (Toury 2012: 170). Although Toury himself makes no claim for being the first to apply the notion of norms to translation behaviour, his numerous explicit works show the contrary (Toury 1999: 11). No doubt it was him who rendered the term norm serviceable in explaining the act and the event of translation (see Danytė 2008).

The first association with the term ‘norm’ is quite basic in nature; people think of a certain standard or model which is regarded as typical. Toury gave the following characterization of what he refers to as norm:

<…> the translation of general values or ideas shared by a group—as to what is conventionally right and wrong, adequate or inadequate—into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations, specifying what is prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain behavioural dimension. (Toury 1999: 14)

In other words, any community has a distinctive conception of good and bad; consequently, there should be rule-like instructions how to behave in a specific situation and to be accepted by other members of the community.

Toury claims that translation is influenced not only by the specifics of the source text, differences between languages, textual traditions or cognitive apparatus. Socio-cultural factors play an important role here: translators work under different conditions, experience different constrains and, therefore, employ different translation strategies which may lead to different translation outputs of the same source text. Toury (1995: 54; 1998: 17–18) describes socio-cultural constrains along a scale anchored between two extremes: absolute rules and pure idiosyncrasies. A middle ground is occupied by norms which can be graded according to their strength: strong, rule-like, and weaker, idiosyncratic. The instruction-like constrains of the norm tend to move along the scale. If a certain more normative approach becomes accepted by a majority and, consequently, gains validity, it becomes a binding rule and vice versa.

Toury (1995: 56–61) observes that norms operate in all kinds, at all stages, in all levels of translations and he distinguishes three kinds of norms, that is, initial norms which refer to the general choice made by translators to adhere to source-culture norms or to target-culture norms, consequently, resulting in either an adequate or acceptable translation. As for adequacy and acceptability, Toury states that “whereas adherence to source norms determines a translation’s adequacy as compared to the source text, subscription to norms originating in the target culture determines its acceptability” (Toury 1995: 56–57). Even if the translation is adequacy-oriented, shifts from the source text always take place. If the shifts are non-random, they are norm-governed (ibid.: 56–57).

The other two kinds of norms distinguished by Toury are preliminary norms that are concerned with general translation policy and the directness of translation, which is understood in terms of whether a translation occurs directly from the source language or through an intermediate language, and operational norms with focus on the decisions made during the process of translation. The latter norms are subdivided into: matricial norms, which mainly deal with the text distribution, as, for example, whether the whole of a text is to be translated; and textual-linguistic norms that predetermine the selection of specific linguistic strategies in creating the target text (ibid.: 56–61). According to Theo Hermans (2013: 3), “the relevance of norms in this outlook is that the sum of the choices made by the translator determines the shape of the end product and hence not just the nature of the relation between the translation and its proto-text but also the way the translation is likely to be perceived by the audience for which it is intended.”

Toury was not the only scholar who spoke a great deal about the norms and their role in translation. For example, Christiane Nord uses the term “convention” instead of the term “norm,” claiming that conventions express preferences for certain patterns of regular behaviour rather than strictly prescribe how to behave in one or another situation (Nord 1991: 96) or, as Hermans says, conventions tell individuals how others expect them to behave but not how others prefer them to behave (Hermans 2013: 2). Nord distinguishes between two types of translational conventions, that is, regulative translational conventions which deal with the generally accepted ways of solving translation problems below the text rank, and constitutive translational conventions “which consist of what particular community accepts and expects as translations (as opposed to other forms of intercultural transfer)” (Nord 1991: 98).

Andrew Chesterman understands norms in terms of behaviour regularities which are accepted as standards of desired behaviour in a particular community (Chesterman 1993: 4). He indicates that, in order to produce an adequate or acceptable translation, one must know what a good translation is. In his opinion, the norms of translation behaviour are established by the members of society whose behaviour is considered to function as standard models, and in reference to ideas about ideal texts (Chesterman 1993: 8–9). In 1997, Chesterman proposed a different way of categorizing norms. According to him, product or expectancy norms are predetermined by the expectations of readers of a translation referring to what the target community would prefer a translation to look like. Among the factors governing these norms are the dominant translation tradition operating in the target culture, conventions of the discourse of a similar genre in the target culture, and economic and ideological considerations. Professional norms, as the linguist goes on, are concerned with the competent professional behaviour of the translator. These norms are subdivided into accountability, communication and relation norms. Accountability norms deal with professional standards of fairness and comprehensiveness, making the translator responsible for the work done; communication norms are social norms, ensuring communication between the translator and reader; and relation norms have to do with the linguistic relations between the source and target texts (Chesterman 1997: 64–70).

According to Mona Baker (see Baker 2009), the concept of norms means that the translator is always engaged in a decision-making process or, as Toury suggests, translators are often positioned between contrary forces, having to decide whether to follow the source culture set of norms or to adhere to the norms accepted in the target culture (Toury 1995: 56). This is closely related to Lawrence Venuti’s terms of domestication and foreignization (see Venuti 1995/2008) which, as observed by Jurgita Vaičenonienė, have much in common or even are synonymous with Toury’s theory of translation norms (Vaičenonienė 2011: 10). If a translation is acceptability-oriented, in Venuti’s words, it is domesticated, and if it is adequacy oriented, it is foreignized. The first aims for fluency and transparency in order to be read as an original, but not as a translation, while the second highlights the otherness (see Venuti 1998). Without doubt these two translation tendencies are basic principles of translation which play an important role in the translator’s choice of translation strategies.

It is also important to point out, that norms are not an unchanging phenomenon and may vary in different periods of time and across different cultures or communities (see Toury 2012). According to Toury, it is a rather frequent phenomenon to find three types of competing norms operating side by side in a society: “The ones that dominate the centre of the system, and hence direct translational behaviour of the so-called mainstream, alongside the remnants of previous sets of norms and the rudiments of new ones, hovering in the periphery” (Toury 2012: 175). What is more, non-normative behaviour in translation is also possible; this is in opposition to what is seen by the majority or dominant group as right and accepted (ibid.: 176). On the other hand, although the knowledge of the prevalent norms is important, it does not imply, as Eithne O’Connell (2003: 21) says, obligatory adherence to them and, as Jeremy Munday goes on, might often lead to the reconstruction of norms (Munday 2001: 113, as cited in Vaičenonienė 2011: 19) or as Jing Yu and Minhui Xu (2017: 72) claim “translators may come up with something creative, experimental, or provocative to disrupt the dominant norm.”

Finally, translation theorists claim that translation norms are usually not verbalized or, as Danytė says, norms are taken as a matter-of-course; thus, their academic characterizations are hardly found (Danytė 2008: 50). In majority of cases norms are observed indirectly from translational products and if certain regularities of translational behaviour are established, then they signify the existence of norms. While implementing this research, the focus has been placed on regularities rather than individual manifestations, which would allow drawing more general and specific conclusions concerning different translation behaviour across time and cultures.

Lithuanian Translations of Jack London’s Martin Eden
in the Context of Different Periods of Time

As mentioned above, the research is based on the contrastive analysis of two translations of Jack London’s Martin Eden (further—ST) for the purpose of establishing differences in the use of translation strategies under the influence of translation norms. The first translation was done by Silvija Lomsargytė in 1964 (further—TT1). The latest retranslation/revision was completed by the same person in 2020 (further—TT2).

A great number as well as a wide range of differences between the two translations have been found but an attempt to establish regularities within these differences has been a complicated task since the biggest part of changes applied in TT2 are rather heterogeneous. A vast majority of sentences have been just paraphrased or words replaced by their synonyms. However, in the corpus of examples with synonymic changes, one tendency that can be explained within the framework of translation norms is the preference for the main variant of the norm of the Lithuanian language in TT2, e.g.:

The words tarka, tropikai, fokusas can be used in the Lithuanian language but they are secondary variants of the norm, while trintuvė, atogrąžos, triukas are the primary. This way TT2 sounds less colloquial. However, less formal language should not be treated as a fault, since the protagonist, especially at the early stages of his educational and emotional development, uses a rather course language. Moreover, the words tropikai and fokusas are borrowings, but they are replaced with the Lithuanian equivalents in TT2. The attitude towards borrowings is equivocal in Lithuania. In majority of cases, Lithuanian linguists recommend to replace them with words of Lithuanian origin, if such exist. Based on these and some other examples, one may claim that the preference for Lithuanian equivalents is stronger than for the ones of foreign origin, even though the latter are approved for the use.

The next set of instances can be hardly explained within the framework of translation norms. Replacement of words in TT1 by their synonyms in TT2 might be treated as individual preferences of the translator, e.g.:

The words metėsi–šoko, beregint–bematant, užkopė–užlipo are very similar both in denotation and connotation. The motivation behind these changes is unclear. All the words are not only synonymic pairs within the synchronic linguistic context of the Lithuanian language, but no significant semantic differences can be observed from the diachronic perspective either. Example 7 (nurimusiu–ramesniu) and Example 8 (šlitinėdamas–šlitiniuodamas) are morphological synonyms where words having a different morpheme, usually prefix or suffix, or the words with certain changes in the root of the words are used in TT2. The latter replacements are fairly common, but the motivation behind is hardly transparent.

Without doubt, certain synonymic changes or a different choice of phrases in TT2 have led to the improvement of translation. In some cases, a word or phrase having a stronger emotional impact or figurative meaning was used in TT2, e.g.:

Example 9 demonstrates an instance when a very common adjective didelis (back translation: big, large) has been replaced with a more specific erdvus (back translation: spacious). The former collocates with almost every noun in the Lithuanian language, while the latter applies only in the description of premises. Example 10 presents the metaphor drank in the beauty which has not been retained but just paraphrased as gėrėjosi (back translation: admired) in TT1, while TT2 preserves the metaphorical meaning. In Example 11, almost a word-for-word translation of a colloquial expression in TT1 has led to neutralization, whereas TT2 introduces not an identical but equivalent colloquial phrase, thus retaining the particularity of language used by the main character.

The correction of errors inevitably took place in TT2. The translator had a chance to correct different mistakes, mostly accidental, such as typos, spelling mistakes (Example 12), wrong usage of words (Example 13), mistranslations of idioms or collocations (Example 14).

The next set of examples containing errors in TT1 are more relevant to this study, because they are related to the language standards which were slightly different in the 1960s and 2020s, e.g.:

Up to the 1980s, the consonants ‘b’ and ‘p’ could not be followed by ‘j’ in the roots of 3 words bjaurus, pjauti, spjauti and in their corresponding derivatives. What was the norm then is treated as a mistake now. As a result of this change, the corrections in Examples 15–17 have been a must. Moreover, before Lithuania regained its Independence, there were also fewer restrictions related to the usage of lexical borrowings or foreign grammatical constructions. Many things have changed since the establishment of The State Commission of the Lithuanian Language (VLKK) in 1990. The Commission decrees on linguistic issues became compulsory to everybody involved in a public discourse. Therefore, if the word biznis was widely used even during the first years of Lithuania’s independence, now it is treated as a barbarism. Example 19 deals with the translation of the word hotel which has been translated literally in TT1. However, in 1997, the word hotelis was included into The List of Major Language Mistakes confirmed by The State Commission of the Lithuanian Language which meant that the use of this word in a public discourse would impose the financial penalty. Even though the act to abolish this list was adopted in 2014, non-abidance of the basic linguistic standards is frowned upon not only by linguists but also by all language-conscious people. Accordingly, TT2 uses the borrowing motelis (back translation: motel) which may be not the most accurate translation, but its usage is approved. Why the translator has not used the closest equivalent viešbutis, one may only speculate—it could be an attempt to retain a foreign character of this particular culture-specific item or the general foreignizing approach towards translation of proper names (also see Examples 29–30).

A very consistent trend is the strategy of domestication applied in the translation of personal titles in TT2, e.g.:

TT1 employs phonetical or phonetical and grammatical adaptation. In other words, some titles are rendered based on their pronunciation, including Miss–mis, Ma’am–mem, Madam–madam, while others also add Lithuanian inflections, for example, mister–mister-is, Sir–ser-as. On the contrary, TT2 introduces alternatives from the local culture—ponas, panelė, ponia.

In terms of the usage of proper names, there is no clear tendency exhibited. Some names are domesticated in TT1 and foreignized in TT2, while other examples demonstrate an opposite phenomenon, e.g.:

Examples 27–30 are instances of foreignization, while Examples 31–32 of domestication in TT2. In Examples 27–28, the feminine names have the Lithuanian inflection -ė in TT1, while in TT2 they do not. Examples 29–30 are of symbolic titles, which are adapted to the Lithuanian pronunciation and grammar in TT1, whereas in TT2 they are preserved in their original form. Examples 31–32 are of domestication in TT2 since their spelling and pronunciation correspond to the existing Lithuanian names. Moreover, the foreignization tendency manifests itself in retention of the name of the author in its original form on the cover of the book. The use of Jack London (2020) instead of Dž. Londonas (1964) conforms to the norm of the last few decades observed in the Lithuanian publishing industry.

The two most prevailing grammatical tendencies are related to the use of pronouns. The first trend is the omission of pronouns, most often personal pronouns and possessive adjectives, whereas the second trend is their replacement by a noun, proper or common, in TT2, e.g.:

TT1 retains the biggest part of pronouns, thus staying faithful to the ST, whereas TT2 considers the properties of Lithuanian as a synthetic language where inflections refer to grammatical categories of gender and number, and pronouns are unnecessary if not too excessive (see Examples 33–34). As for the replacement of pronouns by a proper or common noun in TT2, Examples 35–36 show that TT1 is closer to the ST since it retains its pattern in terms of the usage of pronouns, while TT2 aims at concretization. The pronoun he has been replaced with the noun jaunuolis (back translation: young man) in Example 35, and the pronouns he and she have been replaced with the first names of the characters, Ruta and Martinas in Example 36.

Not only changes in language but also changes in culture result in different translation outputs of the same ST. Consider the following examples:

In Examples 37–39, during the times of religious suppression in the Soviet era, the words God, Bible and other religious words could not be capitalized, while in Independent Lithuania religious and other freedoms have been regained. Example 40 demonstrates the word matrospalaikis which is made of a Russian root matros- plus a pejorative Lithuanian suffix -palaik-. In Soviet times, Russian was a language known by the biggest part of Lithuanian population, while the average reader of the 2020s and further generations would hardly decode the word and its connotation.

The next observation to be discussed is the level of awareness of the source culture by translators and readers of the 1960s and 2020s. The censorship on everything of western origin resulted in a very limited knowledge about the other cultures outside the Soviet Union. It can be assumed that the following examples needed correction in the last retranslation/revision because the former translational choices had been determined by insufficient knowledge of foreign cultures. Consider the translation of the word professor:

The limited knowledge of the education system in the US might have lead to the translation of professor, (1) someone who teaches at a college or university, or (2) a teacher or instructor, by a narrower Lithuanian term profesorius, the highest academic rank.

Another obvious distinction that may be observed in TT1 and TT2 is the use of different Lithuanian slang. Slang is a language phenomenon which changes rapidly, usually within one generation. Later on, these colloquial words and expressions either fall into oblivion or become standardised. From this perspective, replacement of slang items is important, if not critical, e.g.:

The translation of the slang word maths as matė or the rendering of the slang phrase to be left at the pole into o man vis vien balionas (back translation: and I am still with a balloon) in TT1 were retranslated in TT2 using the current slang items matieka and o aš likau ant ledo (back translation: I was left on ice) since these are the phrases that are used in the colloquial speech today. The former ones would be hardly decoded by modern readers. Such translational behaviour suggests that acceptability-oriented translation in terms of slang is a norm in the Lithuanian translation industry.

Translations through an intermediate language are not a rare phenomenon as it may seem. Up to the 1990s, such a method was frequently employed in the republics of the Soviet Union, including Lithuania. As for the translation of Martin Eden in 1964, there is no unequivocal evidence that the novel may have been translated from the intermediate language, i.e. Russian. However, some inaccuracies observed in TT1 can be explained by the interference of the third language. On the other hand, these errors might have been introduced due to the enduring influence of the Russian language and culture upon the Lithuanian ones during the times of Soviet occupation. Consider the following examples:

Example 45 deals with the translation of the idiom carry water for someone, which means ‘to serve or perform difficult tasks for somebody.’ In the source sentence the idiom is used to say that someone is not worth being with the young lady even if one does the most menial jobs for her. TT2 uses an existing equivalent Lithuanian idiom, albeit it is not word-for-word translation of the original one (back translation: be not worth her little finger). On the contrary, the phrase in TT1 is a direct translation of the Russian idiom подошвы не стоит (back translation: be not worth of a shoe sole), but such a saying is odd in the Lithuanian language. Example 46 presents an instance when the word in TT1 is a calque of the Russian word обходиться—both words have identical morphemes in terms of their grammatical function as well as lexical meaning. However, the word apsieiti cannot be used in the meaning of ‘behave.’ The latter (mis)usage of the word is known as the one related to the influence of the Russian language and is very common in translations from Russian into Lithuanian.

Finally, about 50 percent reduction in the use of footnotes in TT2 suggests that modern readers are expected to perceive foreign phenomena by applying their knowledge and experience which they have more than their counterparts used to have in the 1960s.

Concluding Remarks

The research into two editions of Jack London’s Martin Eden into Lithuanian (1964 and 2020) within the framework of translation norms has allowed drawing the following conclusions:

The shift from prescriptivism to descriptivism in Translation Studies allows one to retain the closest contact with empirical data under study and, in this way, formulate the regularities or laws applicable in translation in different time and across different cultures. The fact that translation is a norm-governed activity leads to the assumption that the translator, working under various historical, social and cultural conditions, comes up with different translation outputs of the same source text.

The contrastive analysis has shown that in later retranslation/revision the translator is in favour of domestication strategy. The preference for Lithuanian equivalents is stronger than for the ones of foreign origin, even though the latter are approved for the use.

A high level of domestication of personal titles is also a consistent trend in TT2. In 1964 they were grammatically and/or phonetically adapted, whereas the alternative titles from the local culture were used in 2020. On the contrary, the rendering of proper names shows no clear strategy. Some names are domesticated in TT1 and foreignized in TT2, while other examples demonstrate an opposite phenomenon.

The two most prevailing grammatical tendencies are related to the use of pronouns. The first trend is the omission of pronouns, most often personal pronouns and possessive adjectives, whereas the second trend is their replacement by a noun, proper or common, in TT2. In English, pronouns carry out grammatical functions, while in Lithuanian they are treated as content words; therefore, their numerous omissions in TT2 make it smoother, more natural and easier to read. Replacement of pronouns with proper or common nouns has led to concretization in TT2.

Differences between the two target texts influenced by cultural changes in the last 60 years are related to the areas of religion and socio-political situation. Every historical period has its own taboos—old ones are broken and new ones are put in their place. Greater cultural awareness of both the translator and the reader triggers changes in TT2, including the fewer usage of footnotes in the later translation/edition. The reader becomes a co-creator of a context by applying his/her knowledge and experiences to explicate a certain phenomenon.

A number of changes in TT2 has led to the improvement of the translation. Not only errors of TT1 have been corrected, but also appropriate Lithuanian slang, words having a stronger emotional impact, connotation or better collocation have been introduced, thus resulting in greater acceptability by the target audience.

The abundance of differences (on the level of the word, phrase or clause) collected from the two target texts are rather heterogeneous examples of synonymic replacements and paraphrasing which reflect individual preferences of the translator and cannot be assigned to any of translation trends, including domestication and foreignization, or acceptability or adequacy.

Primary Sources

London, Jack. 1909. Martin Eden<\i>. Accessed June, 2022. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1056.