Moscow University Translation Studies Bulletin. 2017. 4.

In the second part of the complex study of the four-stage hermeneutic-translation methodological standard, which includes pre-understanding, understanding, interpretation, and translation solution, the first two stages of the translator’s work are considered, ensuring a harmonious transdisciplinary cooperation of various social and human sciences with the theory and practice of interlingual mediation. The construction of a modern hermeneutic paradigm of translation as a system-forming synergetic construct of the theory and practice of inter-linguistic mediation allows us to find the optimal approach to the productive synthesis of numerous concepts, models and methodological projects accumulated by modern translatology both in Russia and abroad. The “hermeneutical turn” in philosophy and in all current successfully developing social and humanitarian sciences clearly testifies in favor of the development of translation studies and their modern practical applications in the “hermeneutic channel” of scientific and methodological thought.

In today’s word, scientific knowledge increases on an ongoing basis; therefore, the challenge of analyzing the accumulated data turns into a task of paramount importance when considering scientific problems. This article focuses on the technical text and technical translation per se as they – in the context of the globalization and rapid technological development – should become the topic of meticulous and rigorous research. To measure bibliographic entries related to technical texts and translation, the scientometric approach is utilized in the article. The Bibliography of Translation and Interpreting (BITRA) has been selected as the material to draw upon. This bibliography is one of the few and the most comprehensive online bibliographic databases devoted to translation studies. It features publications by foreign and Russian researchers alike. The results obtained show that not more than 11% of the BITRA-indexed publications are devoted to technical translation, with the ratio of dissertations by foreign scholars covering technical translation aspects being 0.05% as compared to the overall number of 1997–2017 BITRA entries. No technical translation dissertations written by Russian researchers have been found. Two points of view on technical texts have been determined as some scholars consider special (legal, medical, economic, etc.) texts to be “technical” ones due to the presence of special terminology in such texts. Other researchers treat technical texts as special ones as they have something to do with the technological sector. Thus, the scientometric approach is an effective tool of analyzing bibliographic data. In addition, it should be noted that this method is also helpful in formulating practical guidelines for enhancing the search functionality of contemporary bibliographic databases.

The article analyzes five Russian translations of a poem by E.E. Cummings, one of the most prominent avant-garde poets of the 20th century. In the last decade, in Russia we have seen a growing interest in his poetry, which inevitably increases the number of its translations. The author of the article has been attracted by the fact that there are several translations of the poem “Anyone lived in a pretty how town” made by modern poetstranslators, namely V. Britanishsky, D. Kuzmin, M. Stepanova, Ya. Probshteyn, and S. Boychenko. Interestingly enough, these five translations of one text are, in fact, five separate works that differ from each other as well as from the original. The author analyzes the specific translation solutions made by the translators in their attempts to convey the agrammatism of Cummings’s poetry in Russian. By comparing these five very different poetic texts with the original, the author tries to reveal the translation strategy of each poettranslator, determining the final result of his activity, i.e. the work that will be considered the ultimate translation of the Cummings’s poem. The author comes to the conclusion that the original, which has several translations, becomes part of translators’ arsenal that helps establish communication among the translated texts. Ternary relations emerge in which translation functions as an instrument of cultural transfer.

When studying literary translation, a special emphasis is to be put on the understanding of the complex relationship between the two creators, viz. the author and the translator. In addition to frequent and important differences in their worldview, cultural and literary views and preferences, there is an equally important problem – that of the interaction of their personal styles. We can recall the words of the French writer Buffon: “The style is the man himself” and only because of the original “style” of his creation does his work acquire a unique image and genuine value. At the same time, we need to recognize the objectivity of the existence of individual styles in highly professional translators.

The paper discusses how the concepts of bilingual dictionary and translation dictionary are understood in the works of Russian and Polish researchers. The author makes a comparison of the views, focusing especially on a twofold approach to these concepts and terms in the literature (in a broad sense, bilingual dictionary and translation dictionary refer to the same type of lexicographic product).

The article is devoted to the fragment of a language world image formed by the names of twelve animal symbols of the year (鼠 “rat,” 牛 “bull,” 虎 “tiger,” 兔 “hare,” 龙 “dragon,” 蛇 “snake,” 马 “horse,” 羊 “sheep,” 猴 “monkey,” 鸡 “cock,” 狗 “dog,” 猪 “pig”). The aim of the study is to reveal both similarities and differences of this fragment of the language world image according to the well-known Russian and Chinese explanatory dictionaries published in 2012. Because the place of the words in the dictionary reflects the place of the words in the language system, it can be assumed that these Russian and Chinese nominative units that characterize the fragment of the language world image occupy different positions in the language system, with the Russian nominative units occupying a more peripheral position than the Chinese ones.