The Evolution of Russian Literary Speaking Names Translation in Chinese Translation Practice: From Tradition to Innovation

Abstract

Russian literary "speaking names" constitute a special type of proper names whose internal form and word-formation motivation serve characterological and evaluative functions, shaping both the literary image and the author's perspective. In Chinese translation, the phonetic form of anthroponyms is usually preserved, while their semantic and expressive potential is often reduced. The aim of this article is to identify the features of Chinese translation practice in rendering literary anthroponyms and to propose a strategy that preserves not only their phonetic form but also their semantic and cultural significance. A comparison of translations of anthroponyms in four Chinese versions of Gogol's Dead Souls, spanning more than 80 years of translation practice, reveals that transcription dominates the Russian — Chinese translation tradition as a means of foreignizing names in the target language. At the same time, an analysis of translations of individual "speaking names" proves that in Chinese there are cases where both the semantics of the names and their phonetic form are preserved. Based on these findings and on the functional-pragmatic features of anthroponyms, the article proposes a strategy of "semantic transcription" aimed at maintaining both the phonetic features and the semantic content of Russian "speaking names" in translation into Chinese. Testing the strategy on speaking names from Anton P. Chekhov's short stories shows that, while preserving the phonetic recognizability of the original names, semantic transcription activates the semantic potential of anthroponyms and aligns their sound with their meaning. The results are valuable both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, they expand the translation model from alphabetic to logographic languages, taking the latter's specific features into account. Practically, the study relies on an extensive illustrative corpus, and the proposed strategy is tested on "new" material not previously used in the framework of this approach.