Criteria for Evaluating Literary Translation: Mixing the Eternal and the New

Abstract

Today the criteria for evaluating translations of literary texts combine vast practical experience, insights of the translation theory and the demands set by the contemporary society for the translation of literature. The article describes the stages of developing literary translation criteria and offers the integrative multicomponent model which comprises aesthetic information, text unity, dominant style features and their frequency, diachronic distance, translator’s individual style, literary norm of the receiving language and specificity of the social expectations. The above-listed components are considered crucial in the analysis of the present-day and past translations, as well as in the study of two-step translation method via the mediating language.

Keywords

• literary translation
• quality assessment criteria
• text unity
• diachronic translation
• individual style of the translator
• folklore