Alien reality in source text and its reflection in translation

Abstract

The present paper considers and analyzes one of the most controversial problems of theory and practice of literary translation. This problem is associated with the use and representation in a target text of lexical and phraseological units designating concepts or phenomena that are alien to a particular language and/or culture, within the framework of which the text is composed. Special attention is payed to the issue of the so-called foreignness of a concept for a primary and secondary audience, which stems from the difference in background knowledge of members of each audience in regard to the reality described in a book. The material for the study were fiction works of British writers of the 19th – the first half of the 20th centuries, as well as of Indian authors who either initially wrote in English or translated their own works into English, which was conditioned by the following aspects: 1. The existence of a plethora of colonies, people’s life in which attracted the attention of a significant number of English writers; 2. The diverse nature of the lexical and phraseological layer loaned from other languages; 3. The existence of author's translations into English of those pieces of writing that were initially written in languages of colonized peoples, as well as of original books initially written in English by local authors. 4. A long-term practice of translating such texts into Russian that increases the relevance of the research into means and methods applied for conveying such culture specific concepts. The paper uses methods of philological analysis of an original text and its translation, as well as methods of their comparative study. These methods allow estimating the appropriateness and equivalence of cross-lingual communication.