Articles

In historiography, over the centuries under various political circumstances, the same states have been renamed several times; therefore, translating historical names of the countries is not an easy task, since in each specific epoch the toponyms of each country of the source language and the target language must be synchronized. The subject of this research deals with historical toponyms in general and Russian historical toponyms in particular. The purpose of this article is to justify the need to create a database of historical toponyms of the source and target languages for their subsequent analysis, systematization and classification. An interpretive model was adopted as a method of research, which from the methodological point of view is a culturological algorithm of text interpretation, which is used in translation studies. For the first time, historical toponyms have been considered as open systems from temporal and spatial positions. Historical toponyms determine the informational content of historical texts, which makes it possible to determine the epoch of the analyzed events even in the absence of other temporal symbols. Due to it, translators do not only create a stable system of equivalent correspondences of the historical names of the states, but they also study their history with regard to the information data contained in the historical toponyms that were obtained by them from primary sources and academic historical papers. The result of this research is the creation of a system of correspondences of the historical toponyms of various states and their translation into English. This method allows translators to create a system of correspondences for different modern and classical languages; this expands the creative opportunities for historians and permits them to avoid communication mistakes.

Diminutives are found in many literary works created in Russian and they are an important means of sense-making. They also play an important role in creating a speech portrait of a character as well as in expressing the author’s assessment.

There is a legitimate question due to a frequent use of diminutives in literary works: how to translate fragments of a literary text where diminutive suffixes are found? Do these passages require special attention and do they need a pretranslation comment? Is the diverse palette of meanings that writers put into words with diminutive suffixes comprehensible to people of a different culture?

In this article, we will consider fragments of a text with diminutives taken from the novella “Heart of a Dog” by Mikhail Bulgakov, and their translations into English, French and Chinese. We will try to determine various difficulties a translator faces in working on such texts.

This article addresses the phenomenon of eponymy in legal terminology as a translation problem. Dictionary definitions of eponyms show inconsistencies in treating these units by lexicographers. The examples given are indicative of eponymic terms both in legal English and legal Russian being complex units of nomination. Legal eponyms generate technical terminology that is challenging for perception and comprehension; its translation requires explication techniques. Such recent neologisms as Brexit and Megxit, which have emerged as eponymic internationalisms, allow to emphasize the significance of studying eponymy in the language of the legal profession and in legal translation.

Language is the main tool for information exchange since we are in the era of global information. How to effectively use modern methods to break through the language barriers between us has become an important problem for all mankind, and machine translation has become one of the powerful means of automatic translation between different languages. However, due to the extreme complexity of any natural language, machine translation has also become one of the problems of the present-day science and technology. Translation activity in the digital age is a complex system of heterogeneous interactions within the “man — smart machine (AI)” tandem [Garbovsky, Kostikova, 2019: 3]. This article mainly introduces the history and current situation of Chinese machine translation, discusses the difference between machine translation and human translation, and explains how practicing translators and learners should deal with the arrival of the era of artificial intelligence translation and sort out the relationship between the two. Facing the strong competition of artificial intelligence translation, many people are worried about the development and prospects of translation majors in universities and even foreign language majors. Through the research and exploration of the current state of affairs in the field of translation studies in China, this article points out the shortcomings of translation teaching in China. It also predicts the employment field of “future translators” (graduates).

This paper analyzes Russian translations of Chinese brands which can be classified into six translation methods. The most popular ones are transliteration plus annotation and explanation. As far as the Go Believe brand, an interpreter can opt for transliteration if s/he is pressed for time; explanation, when needed, can be used after transliteration. When it comes to translation, the translation plus annotation method can be employed, viz. the transliteration followed by an annotation.