Articles

The artistic features of Anton Chekhov’s literary language — imagery, conciseness, humor, satire, and comic effects — serve as essential tools for creating artistic images. In the theory and practice of literary translation, a particularly complex challenge lies in overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers to authentically convey these aesthetic characteristics. As noted by French translation theorist Antoine Berman, deformation is a universal feature of all translations, reflecting the resistance of the target language and culture to elements of the source text. To address this challenge, while acknowledging the relative autonomy of translation, the translator must undertake systematic reconstruction at the lexical, syntactic, and cultural levels, thereby preserving the artistic qualities of the original work and achieving comparable aesthetic resonance in the target culture. Based on Chinese translations of Chekhov’s short story “The Chameleon”, the study demonstrates how micro-level translation strategies interact within a unified artistic system.

This article presents a comprehensive study of Chinese translations of The Primary Chronicle, with the primary aim of identifying their defining characteristics. By synthesizing the history of Old Russian language and literature studies in China, the paper offers a systematic structural analysis of all scholarly published translations. Special attention is paid to the translation challenges encountered when rendering Russian chronicle texts, through a comparative analysis of selected passages from the original chronicle. The investigation shows that Chinese scholars have made significant foundational contributions to this field, establishing a solid framework for future research on chronicle translation. However, the study also demonstrates that continuous qualitative and quantitative improvements are still needed in this specialized area. The findings suggest that translating medieval chronicles requires not only linguistic expertise but also a deep knowledge of historical philology, cultural anthropology, and comparative religious studies. To achieve optimal results in this complex interdisciplinary endeavor, the study emphasizes the need for future collaboration among specialists from diverse academic backgrounds.

This article examines the difficulties and strategies involved in interpreting numbers from Chinese into Russian. Given the significant differences between the two languages in expressing numerical concepts, the study analyzes methods for interpreting large numbers, fractions, decimals, and expressions of increase/decrease in quantities (multiples). Practical techniques for improving interpreting accuracy are proposed, including note-taking, numeral system strategies, and other approaches. The article also discusses methods for unit conversion in oral interpretation and emphasizes the importance of preparatory work. Through concrete examples, it provides practical strategies and recommendations for interpreters.

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence, particularly large language models, has shaped public opinion that the translation profession is gradually becoming obsolete, with its core functions already being largely handed over to large language models. The present article demonstrates the fallacy of this viewpoint by analyzing the machine translation of a large official text using widely known tools. It addresses the problems and limitations of current solutions — linguistic, stylistic, and technical — and provides strong arguments for the impossibility of fully replacing human translators with machines. The role of the human translator remains particularly indispensable when translating lengthy texts where the standardization of terms and other concepts is crucial.

Th is paper examines the cognitive translation of culture-specific lexis in the Chinese Civil Code into Russian through the lens of conceptual integration theory. The study focuses on analyzing two Russian translations of the PRC Civil Code (2021 and 2024 versions) and employs corpus-based methods. It assesses how the cultural nuances embedded in legal terminology are transferred between languages, with a focus on the cognitive processes involved in overcoming difficulties associated with culturally specific terms. The analysis shows that the 2024 translation more accurately conveys the cultural and legal aspects of the original text, while the 2021 translation demonstrates greater fluency but is inferior in its accuracy in conveying nuances. The findings of the study off er new insights for optimizing translation practices of legal texts and enhancing intercultural communication in the legal domain.

The paper deals with the informative and descriptive overview of the relationship between contemporary American and Western European philosophy, linguistics and translation theory and methodology from a synchronic-diachronic perspective. Numerous works in foreign philosophy have been devoted to this topic, but nowadays they have not provided a foundational basis for a monographic understanding of the relationship between philosophical methodology and linguistic and translation studies issues. This paper analyses the intersection of contemporary philosophical thought with the controversial issues of “pure language” and “pure meaning” and the aporia of “translatability/ untranslatability.” It is established that Benjamin’s concept of the connection between translation and the parent language “has no practical application in translation practice” (P. Ricoeur), but enjoys widespread popularity among philosophical theorists and some specialists in the sphere of artificial intelligence. A significant range of conflicting opinions regarding the significance of the category of “untranslatability” within logical-philosophical concepts is noted — from a complete denial of its relevance to the recognition of its existential ethical-translation value (L. Foran). The author’s research has shown that while the linguistic factor in translation has found its embodiment in scientific, theoretical and practical terms, philosophical thought has not fully mastered the creative space of linguistic-translation yet.

Based on the position of V.N. Komissarov that “the task of linguistic analysis of translation includes studying the role of universals of various types in interlingual communication in relation to various combinations of languages”, the universal of color (in the terms of Anna Vezhbitskaya) is considered using the example of the lexeme red. Th e material for the analysis is the novel by T. de Gouvello “Le manteau garance” (France, 2012), which abounds in references to a number of shades of red as a plot-forming concept. Th e use of the translation method allows, firstly, to identify word-formation models for designating shades of red, secondly, to identify the translator’s strategy when translating the text of the novel from French into Russian, and thirdly, based on the results of the analysis, to establish the correspondence/non-correspondence of the translated text to the nomenclatures of translation universals developed by Mona Baker, Gideon Toury and Antoine Berman. A conclusion is made about the possibility of supplementing the list of translation universals used in translation from French into Russian with a universal of avoiding tautology, which allows one to avoid some obsession with using the same lexemes in a literary text, even those that act as terms, which, as a consequence, leads to a decrease in the quality of the translated text.

Since the creation of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative in China, there have been clearer requirements for the competences of language service professionals, and the demand for high-quality non-general translators has increased significantly. Russian, one of the official languages of non-native communication, is represented in China by more than 200 colleges and universities offering professional courses. With the introduction of the Master’s and Doctor’s degrees in translation to the national Catalogue of Disciplines and Specialties of Postgraduate Education, the cultivation of high-end applied translation talents in China has entered a new stage of development. High-end translation talents are supposed to have national sense and international vision, master language, translation, culture, technology, management and other professional knowledge, possess translation abilities, cross-cultural abilities, technical abilities, innovation abilities, communication abilities, management abilities and relevant business qualities, understand the development trend of the language service industry, business content, workflow, overseas market and be capable of working in language service positions in various Chinese and overseas institutions or enterprises and agencies. Thus, through collaborative cultivation, platform cultivation, thematic cultivation and technological cultivation, translation talents can consolidate their basic language competence and that in cultural literacy, improve their ability to combine theoretical research with translation and interpreting practice, strengthen their ability to apply translation technologies, and develop the ability to organize translation projects and professionally manage them.

In this article, from the perspective of linguodidactics, the phenomenon of antonymy, which is a problem in translation, is considered as a search for semantic dominants. Russian language teaching means that mastering the peculiarities of the emergence and functioning of antonymic pairs becomes one of the leading tasks if we assume that the ultimate goal of teaching is to teach students how to understand and translate texts from Russian into Chinese and vice versa. 

Against the background of the classification of antonyms accepted in Russian linguistics, the article analyzes their problem areas, which require sufficiently deep linguistic knowledge in two languages, and the need for a thorough, thoughtful attitude on the part of students to the ways of their translation transformation. Our many years’ experience of working with the Chinese audience allows us to give some recommendations that take into account the difficulties in the formation of language competence in the training of future translators in Chinese universities.