Articles

In spite of the fact that Anton Chekhov was skeptical about translations of his own works since he believed that his works would not be understood in the West, the first translations of his plays into German appeared already during his lifetime and were successfully staged in German theatres. The following article reviews translations of Anton Chekhov ‘s play “The Cherry Orchard” into German by Peter Urban, Johannes von Gunther, Gudrun Duvel and Hilde Angarova. It may be worth noting that there are two approaches to literary translation. One involves adapting text for the recipient, which inevitably leads to a significant difference between the original and translated texts. The other involves translating closely to the original. Considering the fact that all the abovementioned translators kept to the second concept, they had to accomplish the following tasks: preserving stylistic peculiarities of the original text, translating Russian realia into German, managing phraseological locutions, conveying speech portraits of the characters, as well as adapting the text to a theatrical performance since the text should be understandable for the audience and easily pronounced by the actors. In the article we paid special attention to how all the four translators managed the difficulties and presented a detailed contrastive analysis of their works. As a result of the study, we came to the conclusion that the translations by Peter Urban and Hilde Angarova were closest to the original text due to precisely chosen equivalents. The translation by Gudrun Duvel is not inferior to the translations of Peter Urban and Hilde Angarova in the selection of lexical means, but it often sounds insufficiently concise, which distances it in some cases from the original text. Although Johannes von Gunther offered some interesting translation solutions, his translations have a number of shortcomings, the main ones are incorrect translation of realia and unnecessary additions.

The problem of inconsistency of the scenario and other soft - and hardware aspects of various digital entertainment products is becoming more and more popular among the scholars from various scientific areas. The main aim of this paper is analyzing the localization issues of mass-media products as well as videogame localization. The quality of an in-game experience of a localized videogame depends on a variety of factors and the most significant of them are the so-called gameplay issues. Under the term “gameplay issues” gamers and researchers often understand the features of videogame development. Facing these features could trigger different emotional reactions among the players. As a material for this paper several in-game textual materials have been chosen, viz.: Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, Spider-Man and GTA: San Andreas. As the research has shown, the most usable and suitable technique for neutralizing the negative influence to the gamers caused by gameplay issues is the correction of the videogame scenario. Thus developers and localization specialists can minimize all negative influence in a fast and cheap way. However, scenario correction is not the only technique used during the development and localization processes of a videogame’s lifecycle. Here could also be mentioned another way to avoid negative emotional reactions: intersemiotical transferring. By using the toolkit of 3D visualization software a wide variety of gameplay issues could be neutralized. This technique shows itself at its best when it comes to censorship issues. In conclusion, several ways of neutralizing the negative effect of the gameplay issues have been discovered and formulated. The materials and examples mentioned in this paper could be applied in the industrial practice of the digital media localization specialists as well as used by beginners in the field of localization. Moreover, this paper could be of help to students looking for scientific information about the highly specialized translation practices.

This article focuses on the detailed rules of using certain Chinese characters whose translations into Russian are the same, which means the meanings are close, but there are still some minor differences, which is a topical problem encountered in the process of teaching the Chinese language. It should be noted that the basis for the selection of Chinese characters is the semantic context, which is often not expressed in the process of communication. The reason for this concealment is the Chinese culture. This article also studies the emergence, meaning and use of several Chinese neologisms and their requirement related to the semantic context.

The articles dwells upon the study of medical documentary audiovisual texts translation. Some lexical and terminological problems of dubbing are identified and analyzed. Terminology and medical lexis are integral parts of medical documentaries. Hence, the main problems concerning special language of medicine translation are thoroughly studied. The object of the research is to distinguish some typical translation patterns of terminology, medical lexis and analyze translation strategies applied in audiovisual texts. The article deals with genre and stylistic specific features of medical documentaries audiovisual texts. In order to conduct rigorous analysis the terms “terminology” and “special language of medicine” are differentiated. The case study is based on the dubbing of the medical documentary National Geographic “In the Womb: Identical Twins”. Such methods as comparative and contrastive; statistical analysis are applied to the research. Due to comparing the original audiovisual text of medical documentary and Russian dubbing, some peculiarities of translation are observed. Thus, some definite problems in special language of medicine translation documentaries are detected; the main solutions of the problems are revealed. The study involves determination of the most frequently used translation strategies in audiovisual translation of medical documentaries. The comparative analysis of original and dubbed texts reveals that (43%) of medical terms are directly transferred. The percentage of cases when calque translation strategy is used for medical lexis is 21. Only 5 % of all cases are translated incorrectly. The findings of the study reflect a strong dependence between translation strategies and documentary video. Based on the studied material the most common lexical and terminological problems in medical audiovisual texts translation are revealed. It is concluded that context and video should be taken into consideration in medical documentary translation. Further studies of the above mentioned issues may significantly contribute to theoretical and practical aspects of medical documentary audiovisual translation.

The article explores the cognitive nature of sense interpretation in translation and the role of translator/interpreter who reveals the sense meant by the sender of the source language (SL) message and conveys it in the target language (TL). The objective of the article is to study the interaction of competence and interpretation factors in translation. The tasks closely related to the objective are as follows: to identify linguistic and extralinguistic factors that bring about the need for interpreting the sense in the SL, to show the specifics of interpretation in the LSP-texts and to present the typology of translation difficulties that can be coped with by sense interpretation. The findings of the research have shown that the translator is capable of performing his/her professional tasks only if he/she has a mastery of professional translator competences — the communicative, extralinguistic and specialized ones that enable him/her to resort to the key cognitive mechanism of translation — inferencing — that serves as a basis for interpreting sense in translation. While grasping the meaning of the SL message, the translator moves from the reference to sense and derives inferences. When reverbalizing the sense in the target language in moving from the sense to reference, the translator generates implicatures targeted at the TL message recipient. Inferences and implicatures are based on the common presuppositional knowledge of the SL message sender, TL message recipient and the translator who has to perform the approximation or interactive alignment of this knowledge. The interactive alignment is possible if the translator is well-versed in the knowledge of presuppositions in the language and conceptual word view of both the source and target languages. There are two types of presuppositional knowledge: that of language structures related to interlanguage asymmetries, including discursive features of the text cohesion and coherence that are also linguo-specific and referents (that connect language to extralinguistic situations), and that related to the extralinguistic situation (encyclopedic information about the world around us, culture and specific domains of knowledge and respectively translation). The article also presents the typology of the key translation difficulties caused by the inter-language asymmetries, which result in the need to interpret the sense in the SL message and to formulate IT in the TL using its linguo-specifi c means. These translation difficulties are illustrated with interesting examples from the LSP-texts that need a special precision in translation quite frequently understood by any beginner translator as the need to preserve the expression form in the TL, which leads to word-for-word translation or transcoding. The understanding of the role of interpretation in translation of LSP-texts helps to observe the norms of TL style and usage while at the same time it makes it possible to render the meaning and sense of the SL as was meant by the message sender.

N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” and its Chinese translation are taken as an example for study. The author alternately analyzes translation examples from the point of view of representativeness at the phonetic level, the level of word-formation models, as well as at the grammatical, lexical and syntactic levels, from different points of view investigating the causes of errors in Russian-Chinese translation. Methods: comparative analysis, generalization, correction and systematization. Findings: achieving the representativeness of a translation at the microlevel does not affect its representativeness at the macrolevel, but errors in translations that have not reached representativeness at the macrolevel can manifest themselves at any of the microlevels. Conclusions: in their professional practice, translators should strive for representativeness of translation not only at the macrolevel, but also make every effort to achieve representativeness at the microlevels described above. This will allow them to carry out the translation closest to the source text and reproduce as accurately as possible the ideological content that the author of the source text wanted to convey to the reader.

Object. The purpose of the article is to study translation solutions in the Russian translation of Xi Jinping’s speech at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Methods. The analysis of translation decisions in Chinese leader’s speech Russian translation is carried out using the translation-oriented method, which allows us to study the main processes occurring in the translator’s language consciousness when choosing a translation solution by translation text’s analysis. In addition, the study used general scientific methods, incl. descriptive analysis, deduction and induction, and generalization. Using a random sample, we selected speech utterances in text of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping report at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. At first, we searched ideologemes, set expressions, idioms, political terms etc. in original Xi Jinping’s speech. After that we were subsequently extracted from the translation text and compared them. The translation method analysis chosen by the translator was carried out, the assessment of the correctness of the translation solution in accordance with the requirements for the quality of the translation, as equivalence and adequacy. Findings. As a result, it was found that translation decisions in the transfer of the speech of the political leader of China most often come down to direct translation, especially in cases of interpreting metaphors, ideologies and political terms with Chinese characteristics. In some cases, the direct transmission of such vocabulary does not make it possible to make the translation adequate and understandable for the Russian-speaking recipient, and therefore casts doubt on the correctness of the translation decision made and poses a threat to effective international political communication between the two countries. Conclusions. Improving the skills of choosing translation decisions will improve the quality of translation of the speeches of Chinese political leaders into Russian, which requires a deeper study of cognitive decision-making mechanisms in Chinese-Russian political speech’s translation.

The paper discusses the conceptual foundations of a modern exercise book designed to train translators working with the most popular German-language genres, which include journalistic discourse, which is represented by extensive corpora of texts. The authors describe the key linguistic problems and factors influencing the quality of written translation from a foreign language into Russian. The most important factors seem to be logical, institutional, economic and social ones. Their totality largely determines the genre structure and belonging of the text to a certain type of discourse. In the course of the analysis of linguistic means and external factors, the authors come to the conclusion that it is necessary to develop a series of exercise books on the theory and practice of translation aimed at solving specific translation problems and developing specific knowledge, skills and abilities to work with foreign cultural content containing ideological and value components, conflictogenic factors, and subject to the influence of ambisemia. To comprehensively solve the problems associated with the preparation of translators, it is proposed to apply a systematic approach that integrates logical, institutional, economic and social factors.

This article discusses the history and some problematic aspects of teaching Russian in China — educational programs in universities, the level and number of teachers, textbooks, and the content of classes. The first three problems with the development of relations between China and Russia are being resolved, but the latter needs special attention.

The interest in the study of the category of epistemic modality is associated with the allocation of their new classification and consideration of the means of their linguistic objectification. Among the little-studied problems are linguistic means of expressing epistemic modality of credibility, actualizing the denotative correlation with parts of speech and receiving an equivalent representation of their lexical meaning. The article deals with the semantic analysis of epistemic adverbs in the framework of logical analysis. The aim of the article is to study the semantics of epistemic adverbs in terms of the realization of the credibility of the contents in English. These lexemes are considered in the contexts of their functioning. The scientific innovativeness of the article is at the heart that this article examines the correlation of epistemic adverbs and verbs of mental activity: know, think, suppose, doubt, etc. The objectives of the study are to describe the classification of epistemic adverbs according to the degree of expression of credibility of the contents; to analyze epistemic adverbs of credibility of the contents in the texts of fiction; to identify the correlation of epistemic adverbs and verbs of mental activity: know, think, suppose, doubt, etc. The contexts where epistemic adverbs function in texts of fiction are identified and described. The article argues that epistemic adverbs have a denotative correlation with mental verbs and receive an equivalent representation of their lexical meaning. The author concludes that according to the contexts of their functioning, their lexical meanings inherent in epistemic verbs, namely mental verbs, are manifested.