Preserving the National Identity of the Original Text in Translation (on the Material of Translations of Tatar Poetry into Russian)

Abstract

The relevance of the study is explained by the growing interest in the problems of translation from national languages in modern Russia. The level of translation depends primarily on the translator’s understanding of the cultural features of the nation the author belongs to. The research is based on Tatar poets’ poems of the late 20th - early 21st century and their translations into Russian. The study is aimed at determining the means of adequate conveying of the Tatar poets’ ethnic identity through different layers of the text (lexis, syntax, rhythmic organization, etc.). Different techniques of concretization of texts of original works in the process of inter-literary dialogue used by translators are described in the course of the conducted research. It is emphasized that the transformation of “alien” text into “foreign” in the process of translation is accompanied by an increase in the emotional background of the poems, which is generally related to the focus on the Russian-speaking reader, as well as with the stylistic peculiarities of the Russian language. First, identity is revealed, as a clash between two systems of poetic texts and in phenomena reflecting the contrast between them: semantic interference arising during perception of the original work, untranslatability. It is stated that in translations of bilingual poets, unlike translations of Russianspeaking authors, identity is not lost in the sign of memory, but acquires a new form in the signs of translating language.

Keywords

• national identity
• translation
• modern tatar poetry
• inter-literary dialogue
• russianspeaking poet