PIOTR TOLSTOY AND SAVVA RAGUZINSKY AS TRANSLATORS OF THE PETRINE ERA: LANGUAGE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES

Abstract

The paper examines the linguistic features of the translations of historiographical works made by Piotr Tolstoy and Savva Ragusinsky from Italian in the first quarter of the 18th century. These are translations of Paul Ricaut’s treatise The History of the Modern State of the Ottoman Empire and Mavro Orbini’s book Il regno degli slavi. The similarity in the usage of certain lexemes and grammatical constructions (phasic verbs, constructions with the pronoun kotoryi and the repetition of the referent, the substantive infinitive) is analyzed. The presence of common linguistic features in the translations under consideration is primarily due to the fact that they are characteristic of the Russian-Church Slavonic language of the Peter the Great era as a whole. The commonality of the constructions used by the two authors arises both because of the translated nature of the texts considered, and because of their similar status. The intensity of the use of certain constructions in the editions of two translations is also influenced by the direction of editorial change during the preparation of Russian texts for printing, which was carried out by different people at different times. The detected lingistic differences (grammatical calques, a specific indicator of evidentiality) relate to the level of local linguistic phenomena. The analysis involves the original works of Piotr Tolstoy and the translation of the Quran from French, printed in 1716 in St. Petersburg, which may also be associated with the name of Tolstoy. According to the parameters considered, the translations of Piotr Tolstoy turn out to be closer to the translation of Savva Raguzinsky than to his own writings.