Galina V. Denisova

Information and cultural globalization as fundamental characteristics of the development of modern communication have revealed the need to move to a new strategy for determining what kind of cultural competence is required under the changed conditions. The digitalization of translation activities has not only challenged traditional models but has also largely transformed the traditional perception of translator’s work. In the present paper translation is analyzed from the perspective of Umberto Eco’s theory that proposes the limits of interpretation. This theory has not lost its relevance even in the context of the digital age. The place of translation can be developed into a situational geometry of the translator, potential readers, a source-text analysis, alternative target-text strategies, etc. The place becomes a discursive locus in itself, apt for the production and discussion of what Antony Pym termed “internal knowledge about translation.” Aim and purpose: carrying out an analysis of the strategies of literary translation from the perspective of Umberto Eco’s interpretive theory. Methods: the present paper was written in the mainstream of an interdisciplinary approach that combines socio-philosophical and cross-cultural studies of the dialogue of different cultures. Results: the unlimited semiosis in reality takes the form of those interpretations that are sanctioned by society; therefore, translation strategies always depend on the characteristics of the source text; on the nature of the “empirical reader” and on the general state of the original and host cultures. Conclusions. Literary translation as a professional activity and the translator as an in-between and messenger is located in a specific intercultural space. In this imaginary space new intercultural meanings arise. Translation as a part and parcel of cross-cultural communication is always a search for mutual understanding and at the same time one of the main sources of preserving cultural diversity. Nowadays, the problem of how to preserve the peculiarities of a national culture when transferring one’s own cultural values to a foreign-language cultural environment comes to the fore.