«A SONG ABOUT TSAR IVAN VASILYEVICH, THE YOUNG OPRICHNIK, AND THE VALIANT MERCHANT KALASHNIKOV» BY MIKHAIL LERMONTOV: RECONSTRUCTION OF THE NATIONAL AND HISTORICAL COLOUR IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

Author(s):  
Yekaterina Kondratenkova

The article deals with the problem of preserving the national and historical colour in the English translation of «A Song about Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, the Young Oprichnik, and the Valiant Merchant Kalashnikov». The Lermontov’s poem is a strong manifestation of the national character of his oeuvre. Realia makes a culture-specific background of the song; the translator’s task is to translate them adequately into a foreign language.The paper compares four translations of the poem into English done by English and Russian translators in the XXth century. The author of the paper singles out the main realia found in the text of the poem: ethnographic, social and political. Then the author analyses the ways of realia translation into English by different translators from the viewpoint of preserving the national and historical colour of the original. The author points out the most productive ways of translating Russian realia into English. They include replacement, transcription and transliteration,omission. However, translators do not always manage to convey the national and historical colour of the poem. This is due to the differences in the source and target languages, the genre of the folk historical song, the poetic form of the work. J. Kurnos uses replacements more often than other translators. Translators aim to fill in the missing connotation with the help of context, choice of archaic and stylistically coloured words. In some cases, the meaning of words is revealed in footnotes, which allows an English reader to more fully understand the Russian realia. In general, all the translators in one way or another were able to reconstruct the national and historical colour of the poem and introduce the Russian poem to an English reader.

1983 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. S. Miles

SummaryA course of action is described for obtaining an English translation of a Russian geological text. It is suggested that the Russian ‘language barrier’ in this field is largely psychological.


2021 ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
Kamen RIKEV

The paper discusses several formal aspects of submitting texts to foreign academic journals and publishing houses by Bulgarian authors. It argues that common issues concerning the editing of an author’s contribution include the English translation of a Bulgarian academic institution’s name, the use of quotation marks, the hyphen, en dash and em dash, the usage of glyphs, such as the numero symbol. The article also draws attention to the various transcription styles for Cyrillic texts, as well as the inconsistent forms of patron saints and city names used by Bulgarian institutions. A comparison between the Bulgarian names of six universities, their English translations and forms appearing in Wikipedia illustrates the problem of the often incomprehensible affiliation of a Bulgarian scholar outside the country. The author’s main conclusions are as follows: (1) an urgent need for a uniform spelling of Bulgarian university names in English; (2) based on the information on their official websites, Bulgarian institutions do not have official names in English, or such names cannot be easily traced; (3) clarification of the principles for recording the names of prominent personalities and especially saints, who have long been subject of international research; (4) a need for monitoring the consistent spelling of institution names appearing on the most popular internet portals. Finally, the author suggests 8 English language versions of the name Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Lester Zixian LIU

This research aims at finding the commonalities and distinctive features of translating bèi (被) passive into English in the context of literary texts and investigating different approaches translators adopt. Twelve English translation in the Spring 2015 edition of Pathlight will be analyzed as a way to develop translation resources. The main approaches to translation are: (1) retaining the original passive sentences and/or passive construction, (2) changing to corresponding active sentences, (3) changing into active sentences with the same narrative perspective, and (4) paraphrasing the original passives. Translation of adversative bèi passive sentences is evaluated from the perspectives of semantic equivalence and aesthetic effect in order to investigate whether they effectively and successfully express the original adversative meaning and represent the original aesthetic effect. Reasons for ineffective and unsuccessful semantic equivalence are analyzed, that include translators failing to recognize the adversative expression of bèi passive, and not paying sufficient attention to preserving the original lexical terms which express the adversative connotation and present the literary effect and adversative resultative compounds in bèi passive.


This paper argued for a fresh understanding of Pickthall’s The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation (1930) in light of Bourdieu’s sociological work. The main objective of this study was to develop an initial sociological model for understanding the production of Pickthall’s English translation of the meaning of the Holy Quran. By hypothesizing a field which could be called ‘the field of English translations of the meaning of the Holy Quran’, the researchers aspired to understand the dynamics of this field and its structure through delineating the socio-cultural and socio-political forces. After conducting an analysis at the macro level, the researchers analyzed the paratextual elements of the translation, the data of which represent the starting point for Bourdieusian insights into the production of Pickthall’s translation. The findings revealed that Pickthall’s capitalization is evident in the paratextual zone to secure his position within the field in question. The study concluded that Pickthall’s is a social activity, situated in a social space, and carried out by translating agents, both individuals and organizations, who are in a ceaseless struggle over accumulating capital at stake in the field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-24
Author(s):  
Nina Havumetsä

The present paper compares translations from Russian into Finnish, Swedish, and English of a work of political non-fiction, Всякремлевскаярать: КраткаяисториясовременнойРоссии(lit. All the Kremlin men: A short history of contemporary Russia) by Mikhail Zygar (2016a) and investigates the use of information change as a translation strategy. Information change covers addition and omission of non-inferable content, used either separately or sequentially (i.e. addition following omission resulting in substitution). De Metsenaere’s and Vandepitte’s (2017) notions of addition and omission are applied. The study shows that the translations into Finnish and Swedish exhibit similarly infrequent use of information changing strategies while the English translation appears more liberal in their use. Possible reasons for the additions, omissions, substitutions, and their effects are discussed, as is the potential impact of the English translations on translation norms


2019 ◽  
pp. 268-273
Author(s):  
KRISTINE BEJANYAN

The paper focuses on the English translation of «To a Woman», a sonnet by V. Brusov. The sonnet was translated by Dina Belyaeva, an American poetess, who had translated verses by Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Anna Akhmatova, Alexander Blok, etc. In the meantime, she translated sonnets by William Shakespeare and verses by Emily Dickenson into Russian. The translation analysis concluded that D. Belyaeva managed to fairly represent V. Brusov’s sonnet to the English-speaking audience.


Literator ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mthikazi Rose Masubelele

The meaning of words comes into play when words as units of translation are to be translated from one language into another. Lexical items that are extant in one language but not in others pose enormous problems for translators. The translation of ideophones – which feature very prominently in African discourse – is a case in point in this article. Translators faced with the translation of such forms are required to come up with strategies to aptly express their meanings in the target text. This article seeks to establish how CSZ Ntuli, in his English translation of an isiZulu short story Uthingo Lwenkosazana by DBZ Ntuli, has translated some of the ideophones used by the original author. Translation strategies used by CSZ Ntuli in his translation to express the meanings of the isiZulu ideophones will be brought to light in this article. It will be confirmed that CSZ Ntuli, using different lexical forms in the target language, has effectively changed unfamiliar isiZulu cultural notions to concepts that the English target reader can relate to. It will also be shown that the meanings of the isiZulu ideophones can be expressed in the target language using approximation and amplification as translation strategies provided that the translator has a good command of both source and target languages. The discussion will also look at how various translation scholars view the notion of equivalence at word level, and research on ideophones in isiZulu will also be reviewed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim Mattar

This article questions the often all-too-readily adduced arguments and methodologies of translation theory with reference to the English translations of Orhan Pamuk's novel The Black Book as exemplary case studies. It argues that domestication and foreignization are problematic as linguistic categories. It then seeks to rework such intuitively forceful terms for a sociology of translation, suggesting that they regain their coherence when directed towards questions of reception. The reception of The Black Book in English translation has been dominated by domesticating readings that minimize or neglect Pamuk's engagement with local history in favour of stock categorizations of the novel in terms of postmodernism. Against such readings, a ‘foreignizing reading strategy’ is proposed, one that seeks to restore to interpretation something of Pamuk's engagement with the local, especially his treatment of Sufism and Hurufism. Translation theory, it is urged, can be more effectively and universally applied in literary studies when directed towards literary sociology rather than linguistic comparison.


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (296) ◽  
pp. 597-617
Author(s):  
Amy Faulkner

Abstract The Prose Psalms, an Old English translation of the first 50 psalms into prose, have often been overshadowed by the other translations attributed to Alfred the Great: the Old English Pastoral Care, with its famous preface, and the intellectually daring Old English translations of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine’s Soliloquies. However, this article proposes that, regardless of who wrote them, the Prose Psalms should be read alongside the Old English Consolation and the Soliloquies: like the two more well-studied translations, the Prose Psalms are concerned with the mind and its search for true understanding. This psychological interest is indicated by the prevalence of the word mod (‘mind’) in the Old English text, which far exceeds references to the faculty of the intellect in the Romanum source. Through comparison with the Consolation and the Soliloquies, this article demonstrates that all three texts participate in a shared tradition of psychological imagery. The three translations may well, therefore, be the result of a single scholarly environment, perhaps enduring for several decades, in which multiple scholars read the same Latin, patristic writings on psychology, discussed these ideas among themselves, and thereby developed the vernacular discourse observable in these three translations. Whether this environment was identical with the scholarly circle which Alfred gathered at the West Saxon court remains a matter for debate.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-11
Author(s):  
Robert Lancashire

Abstract Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) has been described as “one of the founding fathers of organic chemistry and a great teacher who transformed scientific education, medical practice, and agriculture in Great Britain” [1]. His research was generally initially published in German, although in some cases an English translation was released at the same time. William Brock identified a number of people associated with providing English translations. Most of these were former students, such as John Buddle Blyth (1814-1871), John Gardner (1804-1880), William Gregory (1803-1858), Samuel William Johnson (1830-1909), Benjamin Horatio Paul (1827-1917), Lyon Playfair (1818-1898), Thomas Richardson (1816-1867), Warren De La Rue (1815-1889), as well as Edward Turner (1796-1837) and his brother Wilton George Turner (1810-1855). In this article, the emphasis is on Edward Turner, Wilton George Turner, and John Buddle Blyth, who were all born on sugar plantations in Jamaica [2].


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