Articles

A prose poem in the literary form combines the characteristics of both poem and prose. However, it is still different from either of these. Therefore, compared to translation of poem and prose, the method of translation from Russian into Chinese is special. This article discusses the literariness of translation of prose poems from Russian into Chinese, including the strategy of combining the replacement of the foot with the dou with the replacement of the foot with a logical pause in the line, as well as the method of working with the syntax structure to preserve the original literariness. The article is based on a comparative analysis of three translation versions of “Song of The Stormy Petrel” by Maxim Gorky.

The article is a comparison of three Russian translations of the Chinese book “San Zi Jing.” These are different translations of the same text made in different periods of the 18^th century: the reign of Peter the Great, the 1740’s and the late 1770’s. There are many differences among them, and these differences reflect the evolution of translation practice in Russia in the 18^th century.

A fundamentally new type of person living in the 1860s, society’s disillusions and social transformations were described psychologically truly and in detail by a great Russian writer Ivan S. Turgenev. Vivid and rich in detail, character descriptions in the novels reflected the features and depth of the Russian literary language, becoming for many subsequent years a model for writing texts of this format not only in Russian literature, but also abroad, including China. A large number of translations of texts by Ivan S. Turgenev into Chinese abound in linguistic material, revealing the peculiarities of translators’ work. At the same time, the complexity and a certain number of different kinds of transformations used by the translators of Turgenev’s texts from Russian into Chinese are due to the lexical and grammatical features of these two languages, as well as the personal position of the translator and pragmatic aspects. Thus, translation transformations are to a certain extent present in almost all translations. The study of examples of transformations in translations of Ivan S. Turgenev’s works is of interest not only to linguists and translators, but also to scholars involved in cultural studies. The present article discusses some translation transformations used in Chinese translations of Ivan S. Turgenev’s novels “Rudin” and “Fathers and Children”, taking into account various peculiarities of the Chinese language.

The 47-year activities of the American missionary of the liberal party, Lin Lezhi, is associated with the period of changesin the era of the Qing dynasty. He took an active part in those changes whileplaying an important role in translating Western scientific works. With a clear goal and special strategies, he spread the advanced cultures and thoughts ofthe West and thus affectedChina in many ways. Many translated works still have an indelible significance. Lin Lezhi is a distinguished American missionary translator who preached in China. Any studies of the history of translation in the era of the Qing Dynasty would be incomplete without mentioning Lin Lezhi.

The realities of the translation process as components of the systemic relations include the situation of communication within which the translator mediates the author’s communication with a foreign reader, the original text as an object of transformation into the translated text and interaction of the translated text with the actual reality which is described in the original text and is reproduced in the translated one. The realities of the translation process manifest their qualities most visibly by bearing the peculiarity of the mediated communication, i.e. communication with the translator’s participation. The peculiarity of the communication situation for the translator is that he must find ways of expressing what does not have analogues in the target language. The most vivid elements of the surrounding reality, characteristic of the original text, manifest themselves in foreign-language realities which may not have equivalents in the target language. By achieving the accuracy of the translation, the translator focusses his efforts on making the foreign-language realities understandable to the translation recipient.

This article pays attention to the use of the Internet in the process of translation, viz. the use of different online sources: search engines, machine translations, Wikipedia, reference sites, online correсtion, etc. The Internet is a great supporting tool that can help translators in their work. The ability to use the Internet can be considered as any translator’s key skill.

The article studies the influence of target language literature on translation (a case study of “Paradise lost” translation by archbishop Amvrosy (Serebrennikov) made in the late 18th century via the French translation by Nicolas-François Dupré de Saint-Maur that transformed the original in the spirit of belles infidèles). Amvrosy praised the beauty of the poem, transforming the translation in accordance with the French text, and altering the heterodox passages of the poem. The translation, approved by the clergy and being one of the most poetic prose translations, paved the way for further translations based on the original text.

The article develops the idea that How do different countries develop their own corpus and the development of interlingua big data. Nowadays computer technology leads the development of big data and in this process various problems that may exist in creating a big data corpus, For example, the phenomenon of non-correspondence between different languages due to cultural differences. This article focuses on the relationship between translation theory and big data corpus, and the possible impact of the development of big data corpus on translation theory.

The article develops the idea that How do different countries develop their own corpus and the development of interlingua big data. Nowadays computer technology leads the development of big data and in this process various problems that may exist in creating a big data corpus, For example, the phenomenon of non-correspondence between different languages due to cultural differences. This article focuses on the relationship between translation theory and big data corpus, and the possible impact of the development of big data corpus on translation theory.

The article develops the idea that How do different countries develop their own corpus and the development of interlingua big data. Nowadays computer technology leads the development of big data and in this process various problems that may exist in creating a big data corpus, For example, the phenomenon of non-correspondence between different languages due to cultural differences. This article focuses on the relationship between translation theory and big data corpus, and the possible impact of the development of big data corpus on translation theory.

The abstracts of the all papers published in Vestnik of Moscow State University. Series 22. Translation Theory in 2013–2017 are presented.

The paper deals with the problem of the so-called undefined realia in ancient texts, i.e. cultural words, the precise meaning of which cannot be exactly established today. The monetary unit kesita mentioned in the Old Testament is chosen as an example, and its representations in different Bible translations are analyzed. Although the raised question may seem too narrow an issue, it may, nevertheless, relate to important historic and cultural features of the world described in the original text.

The article deals with a study of the philosophical notion of antinomy applied to the theory of translation. A retrospective journey into the history of the issue is accompanied by an analysis of a number of antinomies most relevant to translation of proper names such as antinomy of identity and variation, antinomy of fixedness and arbitrariness, antinomy of the source and target language phonetic systems and that of outer form and inner meaning. In the analysis of antinomies of outer form and inner meaning, charactonyms and common names are differentiated. The study is based on four translations of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from English into Russian.

In this article, the hermeneutic-phenomenological aspects of translatological interpretation are examined in the light of the transdisciplinary approach within the framework of the four-step Hermeneutic-translation methodological standard that includes the stages of pre-understanding, understanding, interpretation and translation decision in contrast to the philosophico-hermeneutical practice of interpreting monolingual texts in mutually intersecting and interchangeable types of reflection, namely, understanding and interpretation. It is postulated that a translator is always an interpreter, but interpretation is not yet translation. It is verified as the penultimate stage of the translator’s overcoming of the original cognitive-cultural, ethnopsycholinguistic and system-structural originality of the text and the choice of the strategy of forenization/domestication of the re-expression of the author’s text, search of variants of functionally relevant translation correspondences and ways of overcoming untranslatability. Attention is focused on the postulate of mandatory boundaries and the limits of translation interpretation and the translator’s careful attitude to the source. A translator is not a co-author, but only an interpreter of the author’s work.

Any translation, regardless of its form, the circumstances under which it is carried out or the information contained in original texts, is a cognitive activity of an individual that has relevant competencies. A translator generates information and introduces it into a new communicative space. S/he is a communicative mediator able to settle conflicts of mutual misunderstanding arising in the course of interlingual communication.

Throughout centuries, society has used the results of translators’ work for many various purposes. It evaluates translators’ successes and failures, praises them for what it is inclined to see as fine achievements and executes them for what it finds to be unacceptable.

To what extent does modern science take into account the threefold essence of translation? What models are acceptable in a scientific description of translation activities? How do translatology methods correlate with those of other scientific disciplines in today’s transdisciplinary knowledge about translation?

In the present article, the authors provide answers to these and some other questions posed in modern translatology.