Translations of Cicero in Lomonosov’s A Brief Guide to Eloquence

Abstract

This article examines Mikhail V. Lomonosov’s translation techniques and idiolect in his A Brief Guide to Eloquence (1748), with most of the examples being translated fragments of European literature. A comparison of the translated fragments from Cicero (the author analyses 82 excerpts from the antique orator’s works) with Lomonosov’s own Latin texts makes it possible to see some features of Lomonosov’s translation techniques. Except for the translated fragments included in the textbook on rhetoric, some of Cicero’s works were entirely translated into Russian in the eighteenth century. The author also compares Lomonosov’s translated fragments from Cicero (Cic. Leg. Man., Cat., Arch., Har. resp., etc.) with translations by K. Kondratovich, which were released twenty years after those by Lomonosov. The aim of the research is to show the peculiarities of Lomonosov’s translations, resulting both from the specifics of his translation techniques and the task of these texts as examples of Russian eloquence. The comparative method allows the author to conclude that Lomonosov managed to adequately convey the content and form in his translations and to recreate the style while closely adhering to the original – all this convinced him that the Russian language ‘stands out among all the languages of Europe in its grandeur and richness’. In Lomonosov’s translation techniques, there is a tendency for word-by-word translation and an attempt to preserve the Latin syntax; there is also a noticeable tendency to replace specific ancient culture-specific concepts with modern ones (a principle dating back to humanistic translations into Latin and vulgar languages). The translator’s adherence to the original is of practical importance for historians of literature and allows us to determine when the original text was taken from textbooks on rhetoric.