STYLISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION OF KATE ATKINSON’S NOVEL “TRANSCRIPTION”

Abstract

The article explores the stylistic features of Kate Atkinson’s novel “Transcription” and examines the strategies used to reproduce them in the Ukrainian translation “Розшифровка” by Yaroslava Strikha. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing interest in translating contemporary English fiction into Ukrainian and the need for in-depth stylistic analyses that go beyond general issues of equivalence and cultural adaptation. The research focuses on style as a complex, culturally sensitive component of a literary text that plays a decisive role in shaping narrative voice and reader reception. The study analyzes the principal stylistic dominants of the original text, including narrative fragmentation, temporal shifts, irony and understatement, register variation, idiomatic language, and syntactic complexity. Particular attention is paid to the rendering of parenthetical constructions, free indirect discourse, elliptical sentences, and extended internal monologues, which are central to the construction of the protagonist’s subjective perspective. The article also examines the transmission of culturally and historically marked vocabulary related to wartime and postwar Britain, as well as intertextual references that form an integral part of the novel’s narrative texture. Using comparative stylistic and descriptive translation analysis, the study identifies the main translation strategies employed to preserve the pragmatic, aesthetic, and emotional impact of the source text. The findings demonstrate that the Ukrainian translation largely succeeds in reconstructing Atkinson’s distinctive idiolect through functional equivalence, lexical restraint, careful register differentiation, and flexible syntactic adaptation. The research contributes to the empirical base of English-Ukrainian literary translation studies and offers insights relevant to translators, researchers, and educators concerned with stylistic equivalence and narrative voice in contemporary literary translation.