On the matter of current issues in the theory of literary translation

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of current issues in contemporary translation studies, which include the disjointed approach to translation by linguists and literary scholars. The purpose of this article is to once again trace in the history of translation theory the debatable issue of the linguistic and literary essence of translation with ultimate access to the interdisciplinarity of its nature. Based on an analytical consideration of the works by a number of leading experts in the field of translation theory, the author comes to the idea of pluralism of opinions in the history of translation theory; for many decades in the history of translation theory, there has been a linguo-literary dualism, where one side sought to justify the priority of the linguistic approach to translation, while the other advocated for the primacy of the literary studies perspective. The article also emphasizes the harm of a disjointed approach to translation in the training of translators and in assessing the quality of translation, since more than one generation of researchers has pointed out the interdisciplinary nature of translation. It is noted that there were also theorists who sought to reconcile the parties and affirm the need for an integrated philological approach to translation. Consequently, they tried to substantiate the general philological roots of translation and the corresponding approach to it. Researchers of recent decades have substantiated the idea of the narrowness of the framework of linguistics and comparative literature for translation and see a direct connection between the theory and practice of translation with logic, anthropology, cultural studies, ethnography, communication theory, philosophy, history, semiotics, hermeneutics, ethnopsycholinguistics (N.K. Garbovsky, E.N. Mishkurov), etc. In parallel with the main problem, the author of the article touches on the issue of transformation, adequacy and equivalence, expresses his point of view on each of the issues under consideration. The stated theoretical positions are confirmed by quotations from the scientific heritage of authoritative translation theorists.