Comic Images of Foreigners in Prose by A.P. Chekhov and the Problem if its Interpretation

Abstract

The translators of fiсtion, drama and poetry from Russian into English have to render the Russian vision of foreigners while representing some literary characters. According to a time-honoured pattern foreigners have been depicted more often in a comic or humorous way. In Russian classical literature, in humorous context authors tended to embody the traditional stereotypes of foreigners, sometimes incorporating the ethnic nicknames which had been created long before the epoch of political correctness.

Keywords

• a.p. chekhov
• prose
• literary translation
• the english language
• comic
• character-foreigner
• stereotype
• speech characteristic
• culturebound word
• difficulty of translation
• local specificity