Through the Prism of the Epoch: The Sociolinguistic Aspects of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Red-Headed League as Translated by N. K. Chukovsky

Abstract

This article analyses the sociolinguistic aspects of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Red-Headed League as translated by N. K. Chukovsky in the light of the Soviet epoch of the 1940s. Using the historical literary, comparative, typological, and structural methods, the authors analyse the translation interpretation of the key literary images, as well as plot rendering in terms of such literary tendencies as the neutralisation of style, normatisation and massification of literature, and russification of a foreign text in order to adapt it for Russian readers. The aim of the research is the study of the translation peculiarities of The Red-Headed League in terms of the specific nature of the literary process. The authors refer to the original text of The Red-Headed League, as well as its translations carried out by N. K. Chukovsky and published by two different publishing houses Detgiz and Voenizdat. The analysis demonstrates that the translation from Detgiz differs from that of Voenizdat as there are no omissions, while the choice of vocabulary is also different. Special attention is paid to simultaneous publications of the story at the end of the Great Patriotic War. Stories about Sherlock Holmes met the requirements of both albeit different publishing houses: they had an educational potential and encouraged mental activity in the young generation. They also performed the function of escapism. Although the translator made attempts to render the writer’s choices correctly, he made a number of transformations, i.e. he schematised and simplified the images of the characters, “domesticated” the original text and emphasised the negative qualities of the criminal’s image while leveling their attractiveness.

Keywords

• перевод
• литературные тенденции
• нейтрализация
• массовизация
• «одомашнивание» текста
• художественные образы