Nadsat

Existing studies on the translation of Nadsat – the invented language in A Clockwork Orange – neglect the fact that Nadsat is a result of language contact between English and Russian, and ignore the role that translators play in linguistic innovation, as well as the motivating factors behind their creativity. This study addresses this conspicuous gap by examining a multilingual corpus of A Clockwork Orange from a language contact and language change perspective, and creating for the first time a link between adaptation, as understood in contact linguistics, and creativity in translation. The focus is on how Russian-derived nouns in the English version have been rendered in four versions of Nadsat (French, German, Greek, and Spanish), and how these differ from naturally occurring Russian loan nouns in these languages, in terms of gender assignment and inflection. Results suggest that the level of creativity that translators demonstrate is not simply an indication of their talent, but rather a result of an interplay of factors related to translation, and that concepts from the field of language contact are particularly effective in reframing the way in which creativity is viewed in translation studies.

Available from: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Qui4mZh2eAKjKjYm8HyA/full

The invention of constructed languages within literature, as without, has historically tended to be a Utopian project. The aesthetic process of glossopoeia, as described by J.R.R. Tolkein in his seminal 1931 lecture 'A Secret Vice', has primarily been derived from the author's 'pleasure' in creating languages that in turn 'breed a mythology'. Their invention is led by the creator's desire to invent plausible and rich linguistic environments in which to locate and enhance their fictional world-building.
While linguistic Utopians have continually striven (and failed) to reverse Babel and develop a global means of communication, artists have sought to create rich and evocative linguistic spaces.
This phylum of linguistic artistry still thrives today, especially within the fantasy and science fiction genres, and in the popularity of diverting creations like Klingon and the proliferation of aesthetic Conlang groups.
However, Anthony Burgess broke with literary tradition by developing Nadsat as a simplistic ideolect which functioned, in keeping with the principles of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, to
expose the limitations of language in a technological dystopia. Just as the Cold War nightmare of the Ludovico technique places limitations on human free will in A Clockwork Orange, so the brainwashing process of reading Nadsat functions to limit both freedom of expression and understanding.
Burgess's conjunction of techno-nightmare and linguistic limitation has proven to be prophetic fifty years on from the publication of A Clockwork Orange, as contemporary technologies of communication, such as SMS messaging and the internet, have generated similarly debased argots,
including l33t and txtspk. In this paper, I intend to demonstrate that the world presaged by Burgess in his other renowned dystopia, The Wanting Seed, where the works of Shakespeare have been reduced to a “thin tome” devoid of vowels, has already come to pass.