Translation transformations in the transfer of character descriptions in the novels “Rudin” and “Fathers and children” by Ivan S. Turgenev: a case study of Chinese translations

Abstract

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.

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