RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION AS A PARTIAL TRANSLATION THEORY

Abstract

The origins of religious translation go back to ancient times, though the theoretical consideration of its phenomena is much younger. Translation theorists have suggested a number of terms for naming this translation type among which the preferred term is ‘religious translation’. Religioustranslation incorporates three genres of religious writings: sacred texts, churchly texts and theological texts. A number of concepts and principles, such astranslatability, cultural values in the text, the reconstruction and interpretation of the historical context, lexical and grammatical problems of communication,etc., do not differ from those adopted in the general theory of translation. However, the concept of “equivalence” is subject to change.This is due to the need of adeeper analysis of the communicative goals and cultural values in the target language.Scholars have worked to establisha set of standard tools and techniques to help overcome some diffi culties of translation, especially in a specifi c language pair. Despite Ukrainian religious translation having a millennium-old tradition, Ivan Ohiyenko was the fi rst to offer a well-structured theory for translating religious writings in the history of Ukrainian translation studies. The most recent studies in religious translation have testifi ed to the high level of his theorizing. This allows us to consider religioustranslation a fully-fl edged partial translation theory. Keywords: religioustranslation, translation of sacred texts, translation of churchly texts, translation of theological texts, equivalence, translation in Ukraine.