Moscow University Translation Studies Bulletin. 2021. 4.

The article analyses interpretations of realia in the works by Fyodor Dostoevsky and ways to translate them from Russian into English and German. The authors consider literary translation as a basis for adding new words to a standard language. However, the notions of adequacy and equivalence in translation in this case are not applied to the full, because only interpretations and alternative ways of rendering referents can be used. Thus, every case of realia translation must be analyzed individually.

The authors believe that in any case the translator is to take into account the intention of the original text; therefore, the presence of realia in the discourse significantly complicates the search for a solution to the problem which consists in translating a literary work adequately and fully. The search for translation methods is connected with the trial-and-error method. Using the experience of translation and knowledge of extralinguistic factors makes it possible to achieve adequacy in translation.

This article seeks to show the problems arising from doing a stylistic analysis of Dostoevsky’s novella “The Eternal Husband” (1870). Discussing adequate translation of the story has not yet become a subject of research in Russia or abroad. The research material is representative text fragments and their translations into English done by Constance Garnett (1917), Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (1997), and Hugh Аplin (2007). Studying the qualitative characteristics of the four existing translations of The Eternal Husband made it impossible to take into account the very first translation made by the British writer, historian and poet Frederick Whishaw (1888) because of the liberties taken toward the author’s content. One conclusion is that the entire professionalism of eminent translators may be insufficient to convey the numerous features of the 19th century’s Russian colloquial speech, on the one hand, and Dostoevsky’s idiostylistic features, on the other. The translations of phraseological units, double negatives with inversion, spelling nuances of the characters’ speech show that the author’s intentional content remains unattainable for the native English speaker. Conscious or unconscious changes to the original language invariably leads to a narrowed polyphonism of Dostoevsky’s work, reduces the interpretive potential of the characters’ speech and, as a result, distorts the multidimensional perception of the protagonists. This study marks the bicentenary of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s birth and aims to spark interest in translating the 19th century’s fiction whose popularity remains undeniable in the 21st century.

The aim of the given research is to implement a contrastivecomparative analysis of human and machine translations based on the material of the twenty-seventh chapter of the autobiographic work “Coffee and Cigarettes” by the famous modern German writer Ferdinand von Schirach. The machine translation has been carried out at the Laboratory of Digital Philology of the Chair of the Russian Language of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. The human translation has been made by a multilingual international group of MA students at the above-mentioned Chair. With the aim of visualization of invariance of the translations, the method of graphic structuring of the text has been used. The text has been divided into blocks, each containing a line of the initial text, its human and machine translations into Russian and Georgian languages, and the transliteration of the Georgian translation.

The usage of blocks while working on the translation of concrete texts in a multilingual group enables the teacher to identify the similarities and differences between lexical units, grammatical phenomena, as well as stylistic and semantic nuances on each language level. The similarities and differences are revealed not only with regard to the original and target languages but also between the contrasted target languages, one of which performs the function of an intermediary/supplementary language. Hence, it may be concluded that all the distortions of the literary text during machine translation prove the existence of certain problems: on the one hand, it is necessary to tune the computer to the style of the writer and make it “feel” all the sentiments discussed in the given paper. These issues are analyzed in the course of lectures “Preparation for Literary Translation” at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. On the other hand, it is necessary to “teach” the computer how to deal with the multi-layered differences between the original and the target languages.

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.

A new axiological scale of the politically correct discourse in today’s multicultural society influences the key characteristics of contemporary children’s literature and, particularly, its language. The paper considers contemporary children’s literature within the politically correct discourse imposed by society nowadays. The object under consideration is children’s literature translated from English into Russian. The subject of the research is axiological linguistic changes of these texts functioning in the PC discourse.

In the contemporary politically correct discourse, the values, relationships, wishes of communicants are often connected to the emotiogenic factors in communication. They are discourse participants’ racial, gender, and other identifications, which generate definite emotions, positive or negative. Achieving the communicative goals of making contact, obtaining information and selfpresentation of communicants is associated with the need to form a common emotiogenic space for the participants in the politically correct discourse.

The texts under consideration are Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times by J. F. Garner and some translations of these stories into Russian; The Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit, retold by J. Lester, which have been recently published in its Russian edition with a wide translator’s commentary.

With the help of such methods as discourse analysis, cultural linguistic analysis, axiological linguistic analysis, the paper investigates some of the constitutive components of the politically correct discourse (its members, chronotope, objects, values, strategies, and discursive formulae), which form a new axiological scale in the texts of contemporary children’s literature.

The paper stands for the hypothesis that the politically correct discourse is not acute yet for the Russian linguistic culture. The research reveals that contemporary Russian children’s literature (including the translated part of it) is just coming into the frame of the politically correct discourse, whilst English children’s literature is actively functioning in this type of a discourse.

The politically correct discourse functioning in the English-speaking countries is the target of ironic or sarcastic parodies using its discursive formulae or its manipulative strategies.

The paper aims to account for gender as one of the pervasive forces driving transformation of the literary text structure in translation and to outline possible theoretical and practical benefits of approaching gender as a cognitive dominant shaping the internal structure of the translator’s perspective. The research belonging with the sociocognitive framework of Discourse Studies, gender is approached simultaneously as a function of the translator’s socially modulated self, a cognitive dominant driving the translator’s discourse and the translator’s practical concern. A number of English-Russian literary translations are discussed in order to illustrate that, in view of such complex nature, throughout the translation act gender modulates 1) the cognitive processes of enacting the phenomenological perspective, from which the translator mentally construes the literary text world, and 2) the discourse processes of reframing the narrative perspective, which is argued to be an adaptive instrument of the translator’s strategy. A number of cognitive and aesthetic modes of reframing gender are distinguished that have been revealed to be commonly present in English-into-Russian literary translations. The striking frequency of gender reframing evinces the urgent need for the translator to reflect on pervasive gender-driven differences in the way the world is perceived, conceptualized and categorized by different people and the respective differences in the structure of the narrator’s perspective and that of each fictional character, all of which have to be one way or another relayed in the translator’s text. In this respect it might be feasible for the translator to adhere to the performative concept of gender, which accounts for the inherent dynamicity, fluidity and multiplicity of gender identities ‘performed’ in different parts of the literary text and acknowledges an inevitable marked contrast between alternative profiles of seemingly one and the same gender. Overall, the research findings reveal the need for the translator to adopt and implement a gender-sensitive translation strategy, which is likely to considerably enhance the literary value of their translations.

The article deals with the markers of free indirect speech in English texts. The study is aimed at examining the markers and introducers of free indirect speech and their specific role in creating textual interference. The methods include lexical semantic, stylistic, contextual, and comparative analysis. Since free indirect speech as a stylistic device is based on the interference of the narrator’s text and the character’s text, it is characters’ peculiar speech patterns that it is highlighted by. Although free indirect speech is primarily grammatically and/or lexically marked, other means, e. g. italics, may also be employed to mark it in the text. Grammatical markers encompass a wide range of markers which fall into two groups, morphological and syntactic ones, with the latter being more relevant in English as it is an analytic language. Nevertheless, some instances of free indirect speech (especially those representing perception, with the highest degree of textual interference) lack concrete lexical or grammatical markers entirely, so that contextual cues appear to be the only means to determine whether or not a particular text fragment should be treated as free indirect speech. That is why it is often difficult to recognize free indirect speech in the English original and find adequate ways to render it into Russian. Another difficulty arises from typological differences between the two languages in question, with their different sets of grammatical markers. Therefore, detecting markers of free indirect speech in English texts and comparing them to those in original Russian texts are the first step towards discovering a correlation of syntactic patterns in the two languages in question — and achieving a proper translation equivalence. The results obtained can provide a basis for future research in the field of translation from English into Russian, of which the goal is to provide a set of recommendations for translators of literary texts.

The object of research of this paper is the characteronyms or “speaking names” in F.S. Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby”. The aim of the research is to analyze the implicit connotative and symbolic meanings of the characteronyms and suggest their translation into Russian that would adequately convey the hidden implications. The methods employed are stylistic analysis, contextual analysis, lexicographical analysis, etymological analysis. The findings of the research prove that F.S. Fitzgerald’s choice of names is not coincidental, but dependent on a number of factors. Among these are: the linguistic aspects of the names in the American variety of the English language, the possible associations the reader could draw from the characters’ names, the presence of symbolic meanings, the etymology of the names, the possible onomatopoeia and phonetic properties of the names that could bear the additional meanings. This paper states the necessity of supplying the Russian edition of the novel “The Great Gatsby” with a commentary on the characters’ names.

This article presents a comparison and analysis of two translations of the story “Roadside Picnic” by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky into Serbian using the example of the translation of the working jargon of stalkers, which refers to artifacts and phenomena in the so-called Zone, where space aliens stopped for a halt in their travel and then went on, not wanting to establish contact with people from Earth. The introduction to the article deals with the science fiction work by the Strugatsky brothers, their style, in particular the story “Roadside Picnic”. The main part of the article is an analysis of translations of objects and phenomena left after visiting the aliens’ visit. Here, the author introduces two translators of the Strugatskys’ story into Serbian: Milan Čolić, who published his translation in 1979, and Andrija Lavrek, who published his translation in 2011. In the main part, a comparison and an analysis of the two translations is made; where a deeper analysis is needed, the translated words are checked against the dictionary of the Serbian language and their meanings are explained. Purpose of the work: to show to what extent the translators managed to translate into Serbian the special names of extraterrestrial artifacts and phenomena, most of which are listed here, as well as to explain their features. This work with examples is a contribution to the practice and style of translation of the works by the Strugatsky brothers. Here, for the first time, an analysis of the translations of their works into Serbian is conducted. It can be seen that the first translator, Milan Čolić, translated the jargon of the translators verbatim, whereas the second translator used the method of describing artifacts and phenomena on two occasions. There is no need for descriptions, because artifacts and phenomena from the Zone are described in the text itself.

This article examines allusions and the most significant reminiscences found in the works by Joseph Brodsky. In the course of the research, we analyze Brodsky’s quotes, analogies, paraphrases and main references to the works authored by famous Russian and foreign writers, poets and cultural figures. A special place in the article is occupied by Brodsky’s allusions to the poetic activities of Alexander S. Pushkin. The use of allusions and open reminiscences is characteristic of postmodern literature. In Joseph Brodsky’s works, allusions allow one to show the evolution of concepts, heroes, scenes of action, or to look at any social or philosophical problem from the author’s perspective. Open reminiscences are usually combined with paraphrases and pastiches, with a deliberate change in the intention of the author or authorhero. Hidden reminiscences make it possible to create a dialogue between two authors within the framework of a poetic work. The Soviet period of Joseph Brodsky’s creative work is characterized by the presence of a large number of references to Russian poets. Brodsky analyzes the social problems they identified. These problems become the subject-matter of Brodsky’s heroes’ discussions. Within the framework of philosophical reasoning, Brodsky criticizes various aspects of modern society, sometimes Soviet society is directly criticized. The American period is most valuable for determining the nature of the influence of other poets and writers on Brodsky’s legacy. With a detailed study of the author’s poetry, you can see that his work was significantly influenced by such figures as: Homer, Guy Virgil Catullus, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, Wistan Hugh Auden, as well as Alexander S. Pushkin, Fyodor I. Tyutchev, Ivan S. Turgenev and Afanasy A. Fet. We set ourselves a task of showing the degree of influence of these authors on Brodsky’s work by analyzing the main reminiscences and allusions in his poetry.

Within the framework of the audiovisual translation studies and in the contest of the Italian sociolinguistic situation, historically characterized by the presence of many dialects and regional varieties of the standard language, this article considers the translation of the film “Baarìa” (2009) directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Original dialogues in the Sicilian dialect (contained word for word in the motion picture script by Tornatore published in Italy by Sellerio, 2009), their dubbing in standard Italian (released in Italy and worldwide as an official version of the film) as well as the Russian dubbed version are used as linguistic materials. The aim of the article is to compare these three versions in order tp explore and analyze the possibility and methods of conveying the Sicilian linguistic originality whilst translating from the Sicilian dialect into Italian and Russian.

The author begins from revealing some theoretical aspects of linguocultural transposition generally concerned with the aid of studies by Skoromyslova, Denisova, Snetkova. Hereafter the paper describes the linguistic context of “Baarìa” set in a small town of Bagheria near Palermo, that presents the local Baariotu dialect of Sicilian, the mother-tongue of Tornatore. As a result of comparing three versions of the film, it has been found that the most challenging moments for the translator related to the dialect are represented by the title (evidently given in the dialect intentionally), strong phonetic features, some typical grammar Sicilian forms (e. g. verbs: sic. amunì — it. andiàmo), lexical choices (as trademarks: sic. picciotti — it. ragazzi), especially personal names, including various forms of address (ron, mastru, zu’), and gastronomic culture-specific elements (mafàjda, minnulata). Summing up the results, it can be concluded that the standard Italian version of the film “Baarìa,” due to the historical and cultural proximity in some measure between two idioms under examination, succeeds in reproducing the richness of the dialect, meanwhile the Russian dubbed version loses the sociolinguistic connotations of the original text.

Dubbing demonstrates annoying explicit errors at the phoneticphonological level. The article analyzes phonological errors in dubbing. The article identifies accentuation errors at the word and the sentence levels alike. The paper identifies their causes and influence on the audience’s reception in interlanguage and intercultural contact. The work uses general scientific observations on empirical material based on logical methods of analysis and synthesis, generalization and abstraction, the method of quantitative analysis, as well as private scientific linguistic methods of descriptive, interpretive, comparative and contextual analysis. This methodological framework ensures the reliability of the results obtained. The empirical base consists of linguistic facts extracted from the British TV series “Agatha Christie. Poirot”. The article reveals errors in the phonological organization of sounding speech at the segmental and prosodic levels. The variability of localization of the verbal accent affects 4 linguistic units (anthroponyms and toponyms), represented by different versions, and violates the requirement of accuracy of interlanguage transmission of precision information. Prosodic organization is distorted and implemented as a shift in the localization of phrasal emphasis and deviation from syntagmatic division. The implicit transfer of these aspects of prosody in a written text leads to deviations from the expected communicative effect. The variability of verbal stress and phrasal accentuation leads to a distortion of the semantics, syntactic structure and pragmatics of the film text. Due to their explicit nature, these errors represent communication failures and complicate reception, requiring the viewer to make additional cognitive efforts to eliminate information interference. The analyzed errors are determined by the multisubjectivity and asynchronous nature of dubbing. Preventing such errors by taking some organizational measures (provided in the author’s recommendations) will improve the quality of dubbing. The terminological apparatus of translation studies is replenished with the promising concept of “pseudo-one-language communication”.