Garbovskiy Nikolay Konstantinovich

Seventy years aft er the first publication of the Russian author Andrei V. Fedorov’s book Introduction to Translation Theory, specifically focused on translation studies, the present article makes an attempt to highlight once again Mr Fedorov’s contribution to laying the foundations for a universal translation theory and to observe, in retrospect, the peripeteia of its naming, the identification of its research field, its subject-matter and issues against the backdrop of various social, ideological and research contexts. Special emphasis is put on the functional concept of translation; the connection between linguistic stylistics and the theory of translation is retraced; an interpretation of different mid-twentieth-century scholars’ outlooks on the correlation between language and thinking, as well as the main categories of translation studies, is proposed

Now that the vast majority of countries are becoming interdependent both economically and politically and peoples are striving, inter alia, to preserve their national identity, whose main vectors are national languages, ensuring successful communication through translation generates interest among specialists in the field of translation theory and methodology, as well as cross-lingual and cross-cultural communication.

The Russian school of interpreting prides itself on its rich traditions established by researchers in the second half of the 20th century.

Today, interpreting theory and methodology issues are once again in the focus of the attention of international researchers, including those in China.

Thus, we deem it important to analyze the fundamental features of the Russian school of interpreting and its evolution.

Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Journal Congratulatory Messages

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.

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

One hundred years ago, the publishing house World Literature published a concise study guide for beginning literary translators featuring two articles authored by two Russian masters of literary translation — Korney I. Chukovsky and Nikolay S. Gumilyov — The Principles of Literary Translation which laid the foundations for a comprehensive literary translation theory.

The study guide can be regarded as the first theoretical work of its kind in the history of Russia’s translation studies. It absorbed many years of translation practice of the aforementioned masters’ predecessors. Chukovsky and Gumilyov put forward a number of ideas and guidelines that still hold and can be used to develop a modern educational system of training literary translators. In their articles, both authors put emphasis on the linguistic aspect of works of fiction and, consequently, that of translation praxis in the field of literary endeavor.

Translation is an art based on science that makes technology develop. The modern age is marked by the transition of mankind to a new stage of development and new challenges that make us reflect on the future of a whole range of different professional activities. Translation is no exception. Translation activity in the digital age is a complex system of heterogeneous interactions within the “man — smart machine (AI)” tandem. This work system can be defined as digital translation. The digital translation that uses digital technology as part of the creative process aims to improve the efficiency of translation art and the quality of translation products. On the one hand, it links up the translator’s art with AI performances and creates a win­win situation; on the other hand, it provokes wariness and suspicion. The emergence of digital translation affects three main areas: 1) cognitive and technological, i.e. all the issues related to possible correlations between translation technologies and digital information and communication technologies in the modern world; 2) social and economic, i.e. all the issues of potential social transformations that may have an impact on translation as a profession in the subsequent 20 years; 3) pedagogical, i.e. all the issues concerning translators’ training for an efficient and smooth operation of today’s digital society.

The 75th anniversary of the Soviet people’s victory in the Great Patriotic War once again brings us back to the events of that time and makes us think again about the impact of the war not only on various aspects of human society, the economy, politics and technology, but also on the human consciousness, man’s language and speech activity.

During any war, the cognitive and communicative system that provides communication in the military sphere is being refined and developed. Inter-language communication and translation take on peculiar forms in the context of a military confrontation between “us” and “them.”

The Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War expanded the range of social functions of the Russian language. It became the language of international cooperation, including that in the military sphere, which gave a major boost to translation activities, as well as the development of translation theory and methodology.

Review of the study guide “Initiation à la traduction juridique — Introduction to legal translation” by Vera Ye. Gorshkova.

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.