CULTURAL DISTORTION AND STRATEGIES FOR CULTURAL FACSIMILE IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION FROM CHINESE INTO RUSSIAN

Abstract

The distortion of culture is an inevitable issue in the field of cross-cultural communication, and the use of suitable translation strategies can enhance the degree of cultural facsimile to some extent. However, there is still a lack of literature on strategies for addressing cultural distortion and promoting cultural facsimile in the context of Chinese-Russian cultural communication, particularly in the field of translation from Chinese into Russian. This article aims to study two common manifestations of cultural distortion and explore the reasons behind them, and based on this, discuss strategies for achieving cultural facsimile. The article points out two specific manifestations of cultural distortion: 1) a certain referent is well known in culture A, but completely unknown to culture B; 2) a certain referent exists in both nations, but the cultural connotations of this referent do not coincide. A more detailed description of the two cultural distortion manifestations is also given in certain sentences from Chinese literature such as “A Dream in Red Mansions”, “Outlaws of the Marsh”, “Fortress Besieged” and their Russian translations. By analyzing and summarizing the causes of cultural distortion, this article advocates that translators should follow the “culture should not be domesticated” principle when translating. Under this principle, the article proposes translation methods such as direct translation, direct translation with annotations, and phonetic translation with annotations, which are of reference value for promoting cultural exchanges between the Chinese and Russian peoples.