Unhappy Birthdays in the Novels by F. H. Burnett (A Little Princess) and Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)

This article deals with “unhappy birthdays” in the novels of Charles Dickens and Frances Hodgson Burnett. Both writers follow the folklore tradition of depicting young characters who have to take care of themselves after a parent’s death. In the novels David Copperfield and A Little Princess, the news of their parent’s death comes on the child’s birthday. This article studies why this particular day is chosen, under what circumstances the children survive their trauma and what makes them capable of moving on. The news of the parent’s death on the child’s birthday seems to mark the start of a new period in each character’s life, a test that has to be passed. Having passed the test and won a moral victory over the circumstances, the child gets an opportunity to move on and be happy again.

INTRALINGUAL TRANSLATION: A SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF THE ORIGINAL NOVEL DAVID COPPERFIELD

The objectives of this project are to describe the intralingual translation techniques used in translating the original novel David Copperfield into a simplified version and to find out the reasons why the translator made a simplified version of the original novel David Copperfield written by Charles Dickens. This study used the descriptive qualitative method. The data were collected by reading the novel, comparing the original and simplified texts of David Copperfield, identifying, classifying, counting, and concluding the results. The theory of Jakobson was used to analyze the data related to intralingual translation techniques. The results of the study showed that from the total data (20 texts from the original novel David Copperfield and 20 texts from the simplified version), the paraphrasing technique was used 6 times and the summarizing technique was used 14 times. Besides, the most dominant intralingual translation technique used by the translator is the summarizing technique. The reasons why the translator used paraphrasing and summarizing techniques in making the intralingual translation of the original novel into a simplified version were also found. Firstly, the original novel consists of 750 pages, which are easier to read by making the summary of the novel into 238 pages using the summarizing technique. Secondly, the original novel consists of many difficult words, which can hinder the comprehension of the reader whereas in the simplified version the novel was paraphrased by using the paraphrasing technique.

England, 1919–21

This chapter introduces England as a part of Natalia Ilyinichna Tcherniak's mental geography through the books “David Copperfield” and “The Prince and the Pauper.” It explains how England acquired a new reality for Natalia with the arrival of the nannies hired by her step-mother Vera Sheremetievskaya to teach English to her half-sister, Lili. It also points how keen Vera was to have Lili learn English in order to redress the unfair advantage that she saw Nathalia had since she already spoke three languages and excelled at school. The chapter recounts Nathalia's time in Oxford, England, which she considered the happiest time of her life. It also mentions Nathalia's abrupt return to Paris when her father, Ilya Evseevich Tcherniak, refused to approve of her plan of continuing her studies in history while giving private French lessons as he did not wish to see his daughter become a bluestocking.