Transferred Epithet and its Translation

A relatively free valency in the English language accounts for the free use of the so-called transferred epithet in which logical and syntactical modifications do not coincide, i.e., an epithet syntactically is joined to a word to which it does not belong logically. In the sentence “ He paid his smiling attention to her ”, logically the adjective “smiling” refers to a person, but syntactically it is attached to the word “attention”.

The word whose modifier is thus displaced can either be actually present in the sentence, or it can be implied logically. The effect often stresses the emotions or feelings of the individual by expanding them on to the environment. For example, “On the idle hill of summer, sleepy with the flow of streams, far I hear… idle sleepy hill... are transferred epithets: it is the narrator, not the hill, who exhibits these features. Or, in the "restless night" — the night was not restless, but the person who was awake through it was, and in "happy morning" — mornings have no feelings, but the people who are awake through them do.

The striking and unusual quality of the transferred epithet calls attention to it, and it is used to introduce emphatically an idea an author plans to develop. The expressive force of such epithets lies in their peculiar distribution, involving shifting a modifier from the animate to the inanimate, as in the phrases: cheerful money, suicidal sky, pressurized happiness.

Transferred epithets are widely used not only in English poetry and prose, but also in journalism and in everyday conversation, while in Ukrainian they are mainly confined to poetry, and that is why are rarely preserved in translation:

…his commanding officer had called him … and sent him on his puzzled way. Командир покликав його… і відіслав з дорученням, яке цілком спантеличило його.

The Ukrainian translation in keeping with the existing norms of valency re-establishes the logical link between the attribute and the modified word but inevitably destroys the stylistic effect.

Translation of the transferred epithet often requires word order change (the sound of the solemn bells - урочисте звучання дзвонів), structural transformations of the whole sentence or extension, e.g.: a British breakfast of depressing kidney and fish – англійський сніданок з нирок і риби, що навіює нудьгу; I sat down to a very meditative breakfast. – Поринувши у роздуми, я сів до сніданку.

Stock epithets are calqued: happy morning – щасливий ранок, dumb love – німе кохання, sleepless night - безсонна ніч, careful steps – обережні кроки.

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