Abstract (eng)
The present master’s thesis is dedicated to the analysis of the fictional anti-language Nadsat, which Anthony Burgess created for his novel A Clockwork Orange (1962), as well as its translations into German and Russian. In the novel, Nadsat, a youth slang primarily based on Russian, serves both as a stylistic device for alienation and as an expression of the identity and violence of the juvenile protagonist Alex, among other functions. The anti-language thus plays a central role in the depiction of the criminal anti-society. The focus of this thesis is a corpus linguistic analysis of the etymologically Russian Core-Nadsat using the corpus tool Sketch Engine, as well as its implementation in the translations Clockwork Orange (2013) by Ulrich Blumenbach and Zavodnoj Apel’sin (2011) by Vladimir Bošnjak. This corpus analysis aims to examine and compare the sizes, distributions, and frequencies of the respective Nadsat varieties. The results of the comparative analysis show that the translation strategies vary significantly, and this affects both the perception and the impact of Nadsat. While Blumenbach seems intent on faithfully translating Burgess’s Nadsat, Bošnjak appears to create his own Nadsat variety through linguistic compensation strategies. This illustrates that even fictional languages can be interpreted in different ways and yet be adapted effectively.