On the Problem of Preserving the Writer’s Idiosyncrasy in Translation: Alcohol in S. Dovlatov’s Prose (a Case Study of the Translations of «Pushkin Hills» and «The Compromise» Into Spanish and Portuguese)

Abstract

Sergei Dovlatov (1941–1990) is considered to be one of the most important Russian writers of the second half of the 20th century, whose work is studied both in Russia and in other countries in Europe, America, and Asia. The aim of this article is to analyze some peculiarities of his style and possible translation strategies to preserve it in translation using a semiotic approach to literary text analysis. The theme of alcohol is an integral part of the writer’s discourse, since, through references to drinking, Dovlatov describes both the characters in his works, whose worldview is built around drinking, and the reality around them. The semiotic approach allows us to discover additional meanings and sense involved in the construction of images in the literary text. At the same time, it is also effective for analyzing literary translations, as it draws the translator’s attention to the crucial elements for achieving communicative equivalence between the original and the translated text. The comparative analysis of the texts of «Pushkin Hills» and «The Compromise» and their translations into Spanish (Iberian version) and Brazilian Portuguese has shown that the greatest difficulties for the translators emerge due to a great number of references to cultural realities and phenomena of the Soviet culture, especially when the author’s humor is based on the references to such phenomena. Most often, in such cases, translators resort to the strategy of domestication, adapting the text to the culture of the translation, which can sometimes lead to the distortion of the author’s intentions and the loss of some of the meanings present in the original text.

Keywords

• s. dovlatov
• translation strategies
• semiotics of culture
• spanish language
• portuguese language
• russian literature
• humor translation