Articles

Translation of toponyms from Chinese into Russian is to be standardized and unified. Scientific methods of description, comparison, and generalization identified the structural and semantic peculiarities of Chinese toponyms. These characteristics have become the basis for an inductively developed method of unification of the translation of Chinese toponyms into Russian. This method eliminates existing communicative errors, standardizes the translation of Chinese toponyms, creates a unified structured system of the translation of Chinese toponyms into Russian, distinguishes interdependent toponyms, emphasizes the features of the internal structure of Chinese toponyms, and unifies the rules of toponyms translation with the rules of other types of proper names in the Russian — Chinese language pair.

In modern translation studies, compression has come to be regarded as a linguistic operation, as a translation strategy. However, the cognitive process that underlies compression has not been taken into consideration. Th e authors believe that compression is based on selecting a functional equivalent to the source message, provided that the cultural concepts in both languages overlap. Th e article aims at studying compression pragmatically in various types of discourse in the process of simultaneous interpretation. To reach this goal the authors provide an overview of the previous research that facilitates the analysis of compression from the point of view of discourse; study the linguistic basis of compression; and analyze compression from pragmatic and cognitive perspectives. As a result, a model is proposed which presupposes a cognitive selection of a functional equivalent to the source message based on overlapping cultural concepts in two languages.

Two principles of interpretation are analyzed: the principle of reproduction is based on a thorough reproduction of all the elements that make up the source message, while the principle of replacement involves selecting a communicatively adequate variant of interpretation that would perform similar functions in the given context. In order to establish correlations between cultural concepts an interpreter has to be well-versed in cultural coordinates system of both languages within a certain discourse. On a lower level of understanding compression is limited to omitting redundant elements and replacing them with more concise versions, lexically and/or syntactically, while preserving the informative components of the message. On a higher level of understanding that appeals to the cultural concepts and the language of thought (mentalese), compression involves selecting a ready-made functional equivalent that already exists in the target language and is normally more concise in form.

Оne of the most difficult problems when translating literary texts from Russian into Persian is to understand the meaning of Russian particles and find suitable equivalents. Particles are important elements of the text that concretize, separate and strengthen any words according to the author’s choice. The abundance of particles in Russian and the important role of particles in the expression of emotional-expressive shades of sentences on the one hand, and their small number and limited use in the Persian language on the other, creates serious problems in understanding their meaning, especially in translation. The concept of particles relates to different terms in the Persian language that do not adequately cover Russian particles, which determines the relevance of the work. In most cases, the Persians refer to Russian particles as untranslatable parts of speech that do not have a special, significant function. In this paper, the particle systems of the Russian and Persian languages are described by means of a comparative method and then a number of translations of some examples from Russian fiction into Persian are analyzed in order to identify difficulties faced by Iranian students and translators in understanding the meaning and translation of Russian particles. The authors show that the main difficulties faced by Iranian translators are the incorrect differentiation of particles from homonymic constructions, incorrect definition of a clear meaning of particles in a sentence, the inability to find a suitable translation equivalent or the inability to find a suitable equivalent in accordance with the semantics and style in the Persian language and reinterpretation of the meaning of particles.

This article presents a historiographical essay on the life and work of La Malinche or Doña Marina, translator of Hernán Cortés during the time of the conquest of Mexico. The following aspects that are significant for the history of translation are studied: the prerequisites for the formation of a representative of the Indian ethnic group as a translator for the Spanish conquerors, an expanded range of her intermediary functions during the colonial campaigns, her alleged participation in the massacre in Cholula as an informer of Cortés and, as a result, her condemnation by her compatriots and the formation in the future, the negative image of the translator among the indigenous people, from which she herself was. Thus, the genesis of the translator’s personality is traced, the value aspects of translation are revealed, and the axiological ambivalence of translation activity is demonstrated.

The article is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the publication of the article by the famous Soviet linguist A.A. Reformatsky “Issues of the Theory of Translation”, which played a signifi cant role in determining the status of the science of translation in the system of Russian humanitarian scientifi c knowledge. The article discusses the concept of A.A. Reformatsky in relation to the theory of translation as a fi eld of scientifi c knowledge, his interpretation of some theoretical issues of translation from the standpoint of linguistics at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century.

The Russian terminology school is one of the three major terminology schools in the world. It has always been focusing on the research of terminology and the standardization of scientific and technological terms. Since the 1990s, Chinese scholars Zheng Shupu and his students have begun to introduce Russian terminology theory to China. Russian terminology has profound theories, many schools, and strong practicability, which is of great benefit to terminology studies in China. Terminology research has a long history in ancient China and involved various fi elds of ancient social life. Th e terminology community should be committed to digging out the origins, the formation and the development of Chinese terminology, revealing its development phase and characteristics, researching methods and outstanding achievements, reproducing the evolution history of terminology research, reproducing China’s unique state-of-the-art culture and terminology system, clarifying the important results of terminology research, etc.

This article is devoted to the study of the problems of intercultural communication in the North Caucasian region. The relevance of the study lies in a detailed diachronic analysis of the historical, cultural and ethnolinguistic features of the interaction between representatives of Russian culture and the culture of the peoples of the Caucasus. The aim of the study is a diachronic analysis of the main aspects of interaction between the peoples of the North Caucasus and the Russian Empire, starting from the second half of the 18th century and ending with the problems of present-day intercultural communication. For a comprehensive analysis, the works of Russian historians, sociologists and linguists are used as a reference material in the work, in addition to the diachronic approach, some approaches of foreign cultural scientists are used. The results of the study are reflected in the comparison of the historical, cultural and ethnolinguistic features of cultural polymorphism in the North Caucasian historical and cultural region, carried out using the integration approach of T. Adorno. To maintain the principles of historicism and objectivism, a historical source is used, viz. “The latest geographical and historical news about the Caucasus” by S.М. Bronevsky, contemporary with the events described. Bronevsky not only prepared most of the material on the Russian-Persian, Russian-Turkish and Russian-Caucasian treaties by the beginning of the second stage of the Caucasian War, but also left comments regarding the ethnolinguistic features of the content of these documents. For example, their inconsistency or the incompetence of Russian translators. The historical experience of modern historians I. F. Blaramberg and Yu.Yu. Klychnikov provides further underpinnings. On the basis of the studied material on the 18th and 19th centuries in relation to the southern political direction, a brief description of the modern ethnic and sociolinguistic features of the region is given.

The article deals with the comparative aspect of the semantics of English, German and Russian idioms, representing the value of consent as the basis for successful interaction and communication. The material of research is English, German and Russian idioms, expressing consent and their contexts of use from the British National Corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The results of research show that the basis for agreement in different languages is understanding, mutual understanding, friendly relations, the ability to build communication, trust, the state of mind. In different languages, a figurative variation of consent in idioms and their different use as functional correspondences in translation are found. So, the inner form of similar in meaning idioms imposes restrictions on their use in contexts and accordingly affects the possibility of using them as equivalents.

The article dwells upon the study of speech acts produced within the frames of the English academic discourse wherein the illocutionary act represents an ultimate unit to consider. Hence, there is an attempt made herein to look into the notion of performativity of English verbs, with the verb “to suggest” being an integral part of the English modals can/may-comprising constructions and playing a key role in this analysis. The field of this study is dedicated to the semantics of an event in academic medical discourse, aimed at revealing the possible trends for mental representations in the course of medicine-related texts reading as well as modelling possible scenarios of such events and their occurrence. 

The aforementioned information with due account of such terms as plausibility, certainty and likelihood that are of high importance when it comes to the medicine and health-related topics, brings across the purpose of this study. This work is thus aimed at proving (and finding the corresponding evidence or reasoning) the fact that the verb “to suggest” belongs to the performative ones. Such methods as due observation and systematic analysis help us reveal the comprehensive properties of the verb “to suggest” as a basis underlying the author’s intentions and representing the new special type of performatives named “implicitly assertive” as suggested by Y.M. Suleymanova in her study dedicated to the performative types. 

In the course of this study, we consider a handful of possible scenarios with can/may-comprising constructions following the main clause introduced by the verb “to suggest” and apply the theory of speech acts developed by J. Austin. The findings we obtain herein bring us to the conclusion that the verb “to suggest” should be referred to as a performative verb, belonging to the so named class of “implicitly assertive performatives”.

A review of the monograph by Mishkurov E.N. and Novikova M.G. “Cognitive-Hermeneutic Approach to Translation Theory and Methodology.” Moscow: Flinta, 2020. 300 p.

This article is a review of the dictionary of popular expressions from cartoons “Don’t you make laugh my horseshoes” written by Svetlana G. Shulezhkova and her students. The destination of the dictionary, its macrostructure and the entries’ structure are described. The most famous film expressions are analyzed. Various problems of their translation is considered.