Translating Trauma Narratives: The Case of Sepetys’ Novel “Between Shades of Gray” and Its Cinematic Adaptation Titled “Ashes in the Snow” by Markevicius (2018)

Abstract

The twentieth century witnessed an abundant number of traumatic events related to dark history, like exiles and repressions by the Soviet regime in Lithuania in 1940-1953. In a single week of June 1941, the Soviets exiled 2% of the entire Lithuania’s population, while the total number reached nearly 14%. At the time, when it was allowed to speak about the unspeakable events of travelling to and surviving imprisonment in different concentration camps, numerous important works of various genres were published.

The first historical novel in English - Between Shades of Gray - was written in 2011 by Ruta Sepetys, the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. The novel was translated into 30 languages. In 2018 Marius A. Markevicius adapted the novel into a film titled “Ashes in the Snow.”

The aim of the research is to discuss trauma and its reflection in literature and cinema, focusing on translation as screen adaptation. The novelty of the paper lies in the topic of (re)focalization when dealing with screen adaptation in relation to collective or personal traumas embodied in literary works. The concepts of conventional translation and adaptational translation by Henrik Gotlieb (2017: 52) are also discussed. The analysis of trauma is based on Cathy Caruth’s ideas who defines traumatic memories as non-verbal, so filmmakers have to find a way to express trauma when language becomes inaccessible and inadequate (Caruth 1996: 3-6).

Gerard Genette’s three types of focalization, -  zero, internal and external, - as well as visible and invisible narrator in the story, offer a new approach to the study of audiovisual translation from the perspective of screen adaptation according to the external and internal position of the focalizer in the narrative: perceptual, psychological and ideological.