Филологический класс (Feb 2019)
A. S. PUSHKIN, “THE WINTER ROAD”: THE POEM’S RECEPTION IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD THROUGH THE MIRROR OF CLOSE READING
Abstract
The article focuses on the problem of the reception of Russian poetry translations in English-speaking culture. The object is Pushkin’s poem “The Winter Road”, translated into English in the period of 1885–2016. The subject is the particularities of conveying the content of the poem in English translations. The study materials are 12 translations of “The Winter Road”. The translations were carried out both by English and Russian native speakers. The main objective of the research is to see using the close reading method, what difficulties can be encountered by translators of Russian poetry. The tasks of the study were as follows: to describe the peculiarities of conveying the poem’s vocabulary, to outline the group of the key words, recognize and describe discrepancies in their translation, to analyze the process of adaptation of the poem in the English-speaking culture. The close reading method, the descriptive one, the componential one, the conceptual one, the contextual one, that of collocation were used in the course of the study. The study showed that at the lexical level, an insufficient knowledge of the source language and the translation of culture-specific vocabulary are main problems. The laconicism of Pushkin’s vocabulary allows translators to be the poet’s collaborators. A change in the landscape description in translations as compared to the original demonstrates the translator’s notions concerning Russia inherent in English-speaking culture. The “key words” of Russian culture are impossible to translate due to the culture difference. The translations reflect profound changes in culture that occurred during the 19th century. Due to the abundance and variety of texts slow reading of Pushkin’s translations can serve as an excellent training for translators.
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