Comparative linguistic analysis of translations of Chinese fairy tales

Abstract

The study conducted a comparative linguistic analysis of the originals of Chinese fairy tales and their translations into Russian (a prerequisite was the presence of at least two interpretations of each fairy tale selected for analysis). The translations were compared not only with the original texts, but also with each other, in order to establish the strategies of translation activities and the methods of translation transformations used. The source base of the study was a collection of Chinese fairy tales by the famous Russian sinologist Boris Lvovich Riftin and a similar collection of fairy tales "Fairy Tales of the Middle Kingdom", translated and prepared for publication by the Seventh Book editorial office in 2012. Two strategies have been identified: forenization and domestication, as well as methods of generalization, addition, omission, transcription, compensation, and sentence division. It is established that in a number of cases translators changed or missed Chinese cultural symbols, a possible explanation for this phenomenon is proposed: poetization, modernization of meanings, emotionally expressive allocation of any significant element (emphase). In practice, it has been established how the era in which the translator lives and the culture leave an imprint on the translations of ancient foreign-language texts. The linguistic analysis of Chinese phraseological units found in fairy tales and their Russian-language analogues or semantic substitutions is carried out. It is analyzed how and why morally indifferent Chinese fairy tales were interpreted in the logic of the victory of good over evil. The results obtained can be used in the course of teaching the disciplines "Written translation (Chinese)", "Poetic translation of Chinese texts", as well as in research activities.