PREZENT U ROMANU IVE ANDRIĆA PROKLETA AVLIJA I NjEGOVI EKVIVALENTI U PREVODU NA ENGLESKI JEZIK

Abstract

The present tense shows a considerable syntactic and semantic potential within different languages. Apart from primary ones, numerous secondary usages and meanings of the tense have been widely recognized. Such stylistic layering accomplished by means of this tense is frequently established and analyzed both in Serbian and English verb systems. The paper investigates both realizations of the present tense in Ivo Andrić’s novel The Damned Yard (1954) and the degree of the achieved equivalence in its English translation (2000). The analysis of the original showed that the present tense conveyed indicative, relative, transposed and modal meanings. However, due to the fact that, contrary to the original, narration in the English translation of the novel was set within the framework of past, certain important aspects of meaning of the present tense can be said to have been lost. Translated forms of the present show misplaced emphasis on action in lieu of the reader’s perception of the action and its vividness, which is regarded as inadequate with respect to the forms and meanings of the present tense found in the original.