Малые жанры фольклора калмыков: проблемы перевода (на материалах И. И. Попова)

Abstract

Introduction. Proverbs and sayings are a genre of oral creativity that transmits the knowledge and experience of many generations. Paroemias are of practical importance for an individual as a member of society endowed with social roles and living by certain rules. The proverbs of the Don Kalmyks recorded by Ivan I. Popov also reflect the accumulated life experiences of previous generations, the wisdom of the people to have created them, their attitudes to values with due account of lifestyles and traditions of the ethnos. In this regard, translation of proverbs is difficult. Translating what is part of the culture of one people into another language is a complex process. Goals. The article aims to study Kalmyk-to-Russian translations of samples of paroemias contained in unpublished materials from the Popov Collection at the State Archive of Rostov Oblast. The scientific novelty of the work lies in that no studies to examine translation of minor Kalmyk folklore genres have been undertaken. Results. Knowledge of ethnic history and culture, spoken and literary Kalmyk language, painstaking collecting efforts, direct communication with informants allowed the collector to do accurate translations of samples of minor genres. Manuscripts of Ivan I. Popov demonstrate that he not only understood the meaning of a translated text but also possessed the phraseological richness of language, knew the oral tradition of the Kalmyks. The strategy of Popov’s translation is based on that he gives translations of proverbs and sayings reflecting the ethnic life realities, and in separate notes draws equivalents of paroemias from Russian folklore. So, the translation of proverbs into Russian is supplemented with notes in the manuscripts. In this case, Popov gives meanings of individual lexemes, patterns of their use in speech, sometimes specific contexts of use for paroemias are depicted. Ivan I. Popov, having perfectly studied colloquial speech of the Don Kalmyks, also turned to dictionaries, in particular, to the most complete dictionary of that time — the Mongolian-Russian-French Dictionary by O. M. Kowalewski, Mongolic grammars, textbooks, sources on the history and culture of the ethnos. All the above mentioned made it possible for the collector to do adequate scientific Russian translations of samples of minor Kalmyk folklore genres.