Cultural Realia Research Articles

Перевод в переводе: стратегии передачи инокультурности (по «китайским» детективам Р. ван Гулика)

This article presents an analysis of various methods of translating foreign cultural colouring in works of fiction. An exotic culture (Chinese) is mediated by the author’s native language (British English) and then serves as an object of translation for a foreign-language target audience (Russian-speaking). Such a double ethnolinguistic barrier is overcome by translators in different ways, involving various strategies. The analysis focused on Robert van Gulik’s novels The Emperor’s Pearl and Necklace and Calabash from the English-language crime fiction series about Judge Dee, translated into Russian by Zh. Grushanskaya, I. Mansurov and O. Zavyalova with a minimal time gap. The research methodology is based on comparative and contextual analysis as well as analysis of dictionary definitions using lexicographic sources. In addition, the methods of analysis and synthesis, generalization and abstraction, classification, interpretation, and description are applied. Realia as fragments of the linguistic and conceptual worldview of mediaeval China are actively used by van Gulik to create a specific colouring of Chinese culture, exotic for Europeans. From British English into Russian, they are translated by means of various techniques reflecting different translation strategies. The multiple solutions include foreignization with explanatory translation, domestication, omission and elimination of national specifics. The translation variability revealed is determined by the individual translation style due to the levelling of other factors of translation multiplicity, since the time gap between the translations is minimal, the target audience is homogeneous, and the direction of the interlanguage and intercultural contact is one-dimensional. The identified errors in translation solutions deviating from adequacy are caused by pseudo-equivalence traps and incorrect strategies for conveying foreign cultural realia in a doubly mediated translation.

Некоторые проблемы перевода политического анекдота (на материале немецкого языка)

The aim of the research is to identify potential problems in translating political German jokes into Russian. The research is based on jokes about the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany extracted from a printed collection and relevant German thematic Internet sites. The scientific novelty of the research lies in substantiating a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to the problems of translation (understanding) of a political joke, in which attention should be focused not only on interlingual, but also on intercultural differences between the two societies. The research conducted allows us to confirm that the structure of a (political) joke in German and Russian societies is similar. Translation problems usually arise due to insufficient linguistic competence, as well as to the lack of cultural background in conveying historical, political, cultural realia, which contain implicit cultural subcontext. To understand the latter, one should possess cultural knowledge close to that of a native speaker. So, to perceive a comic effect of a joke, a foreign recipient should first study culturally relevant information or it should be explained to them.

‘Far too much of contradiction’ [‘Protivorechiy ochen mnogo’

Devoted to Pushkin’s novel in verse Eugene Onegin [Evgeny Onegin], the article is a sequel to the author’s previous article ‘What! From outback steppe villages…’ [‘Kak! Iz glushi stepnykh seleniy…’] (Voprosy Literatury, 2019, No. 5) on the same theme. The scholar sets out to reconstruct those facts of the protagonist’s and his relatives’ biography that can only be discovered by detailed historical analysis of the text in comparison with the historical and cultural realia of Pushkin’s days. Such in-depth analysis throws new light on the complicated relationships of the novel’s main characters, determined by a psychological as well as socio-cultural subtext that was immediately recognizable by Pushkin’s contemporaries, but which is lost on later generations. Based on her earlier studies of Russian Catholicism and the problems of the historical reconstruction of literary texts, E. Tsimbaeva proposes a tentative spiritual and intellectual portrait of Onegin’s mother, whom Pushkin never mentions directly. The scholar sees her goal in broadening the reader’s understanding of the poet’s original design as well as the stages of, and reasons for, subsequent alterations acknowledged by Pushkin himself in his mention of ‘contradictions’ in the final draft.

Considering the Factor of Ignorance in Linguo-Criminal Texts

The article considers the problem of ignorance and resulting misunderstanding in texts that are the objects of forensic linguistic expertise. The authors of linguo-criminal texts may use set phrases that have become memes, but it can be difficult to determine whether they are real citations. Misunderstanding of words and phraseological units is often explained by the fact that the speakers are detached from Soviet reality, including Soviet cultural realia. Soviet people understood them, either from their own experience or from works of literature and art (performances or films). The author may be aware of a quote, but not know its origin and real meaning. In such cases, careful contextual analysis of the utterance is necessary. In addition, the expert must take into account linguistic factors: firstly, a certain quotation is reproduced in a standardized or free form, and secondly, this phrase is rigidly or freely specified according to the rules of syntax. The semantics of some words can be understood only after reference to dictionaries, but there can be no certainty that the author of the text meant this. Many words are polysemantic, and their true meaning is not always shown in the context.

ВАРИАНТЫ ПОВТОРНОГО ПЕРЕВОДА КЛАССИЧЕСКИХ ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ СОНЕТА 116 У. ШЕКСПИРА)

The article presents part of the research on retranslation in modern translation studies both in Russia and abroad. Some factors and causes are characterised as being important for choosing world classical works of literature, namely the status of the author and his/her creative works in the world community, his/her popularity at a certain time of the society development, the obsolescence of previous translations, from the view point of modern cultural realia, the aim of the translator to present his/her interpretation of the original text, etc. Of great importance is the study of William Shakespeare’s works who is a world literature classic. The translations of Shakespeare’s works into Russian are considered to be the best translations from English into a foreign language. The article analyses the degree of translation’s adequacy which is one of the most important criteria of translation quality.

STRATEGIES OF COGNITIVE IMAGES TRANSLATION IN FAIRY TALES (WESTERN AND EASTERN SLAVIC INTERCULTURAL PARALLELS)

The object is the semantic-grammatical and figurative-cognitive structure of phraseological analogues and fixed comparisons (in Czech and Slovak fairy tale texts) is traced in detail, taking into account their transformations in translation and types of interlingual phraseological equivalents, cases of replacement of phrases and paraphrases by non-phraseological contexts are explicated, and vice versa, the use of figurative signs and idioms in the target text that are not present in the original text (units with spatial semantics, emotion metaphors, folklorems and cognitems related to social and marriage concepts) are analysed. The purpose of this article is the differences in the figurative and conceptual structure, some initial, medial and final formulas in parallel texts and in comparison with other linguistic cultures, in particular Ukrainian and Polish fairy tale discourse (the concept of the Way, the journey, typical for fairy tales) are briefly described. Conclusions: Differences can also be traced at the level of semantic variation in the ways of expressing the difficult tasks and ordeals of the heroes, for example, the idea of the impossible or certain pragmatic formulas and constructions. These and other transformations of plots and motifs are typical of fairy tales in different linguistic cultures. This gives grounds to refer to them as peculiar cognitems. Where relevant, authors provides ethnocultural comments on the motivation of the images, their connection with traditional folk culture, ritual and customary representations of a particular ethnic group, and highlights the specifics of the rendering of these cultural realia, the symbolic function of objects and characters in the compared languages (verbalisation of the concepts of old age, unmarriedness, laziness, ways of phraseological representation of the semantic opposition of friend and foe, good and evil, clean and dirty, etc.). *The study is published with the support of the international grant project Erasmus+ KA220-HED No. 2021–1-SK01-KA220-HED-000022917 entitled The innovation of the concept and curriculum of doctoral study programs and increasing their effectiveness.

Translating Russian Literature into Italian: A Case Study between Language and Culture

Abstract: The present article focuses on some reflectionsabout the process of translation into Italian of the well-known Russian fairy tale by Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy(1882-1945) Zolotoy klyuchik, ili Priklyucheniya Buratino(The Little Golden Key, or the Adventures of Burattino, 1935). Basing from the methodological point of view on some recent acquisitions of international TranslationTheory, we will examine the main “difficulties” or “challenges” for the translator present in the source text, such as anisomorphisms, linguistic connotations, neologisms, cultural realia and phraseologisms. We willalso consider the employment of different stylistic registersin the tale, often connected to the characters’ “expressiveaura” and to thick intertextual allusions to Russian Silver Age. Our lexical and stylistic choices in the translated text will be analyzed with regard to the dominants of the original work and to the specific characteristics of Russian(and Soviet) children literature of the time. Some solutionsproposed in the two published Italian versions of the 1980swill be also taken into account, questioning the opportunityand the main orientations of a new translation in relation to the kind of “implied readers” expected.

George Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke, eds. Scribal Habits in Near Eastern Manuscript Traditions

George Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke, eds. <i>Scribal Habits in Near Eastern Manuscript Traditions</i>

Functions of Words Denoting Cultural Realia in Pelevin’s “Prince of Gosplan” and its English Translation

The article presents the results of the research made as a part of the project describing cultural realia in Victor Pelevin’s works and preparing the special structured commentary to his texts. English translations of Pelevin’s short stories and novels are used as a representative background in the research of textual functions of realia. In the novel “Prince of Gosplan” the realia of late Soviet epoch make a bizarre mixture with the elements of virtual reality in a variety of game worlds where the heroes of the text exist. The sphere of the games, as well as the sphere of the Soviet life, has a number of distinct temporal features. The realia incorporated in the text by the author perform a number of important functions: they create the atmosphere of the late Soviet epoch, constitute the time movement in the novel, introduce intertextual allusions, perform at the philosophical and mythological level of the text. The only existing English translation of the novel does not present all these functions. The article includes the classification of the realia, description of their functions, advice to future translators.

FRANKO'S ARTISTIC DISCOURSE IN UKRAINIAN TRANSLATIONS: A LINGUACULTURAL ANALYSIS

The article provides a linguistic and cultural analysis of Ukrainian translations of French literature. The study reveals important aspects of the transmission of artistic symbols and cultural realia by Ukrainian translators and their influence on the perception by Ukrainian readers. The relevance of the research is due to the growing volume of translations of French texts, the importance of quality translation and the study of linguistic and cultural aspects of translation. The results of the study indicate different translation strategies used by translators to convey the content and form of the original, as well as the importance of taking into account linguistic and cultural features when reproducing artistic images. The analysis of the translation of the poem “Chanson d’automne” by Paul Verlaine emphasizes the complexity of translating poetry and the need to preserve its stylistic and sound features.

Translating Poetry – An Impossible Task?

Abstract Poetry is often claimed to be untranslatable. More specifically, rendering light verse, i.e. poetic humour in another language poses serious challenges for the translator to encounter. In spite of these alleged obstacles, T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats has been translated and lately retranslated into Hungarian in the form of inventive and jocular texts for children. After summarizing the theoretical aspects of poetry translation and providing a brief overview of Eliot’s collection of poems about cats, the present study aims to approach the English source text by highlighting its foregrounded elements: titles, names, and cultural realia and their Hungarian counterparts in the latest translation by Attila Havasi and Dániel Varró.

RENDERING LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL REALIA IN UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH ALLUSIONS

The paper is focused on the study of linguistic means of rendering lingual and cultural realia conveyed by allusions in English political speeches and their Ukrainian translation. It is argued that allusions are among those linguistic means which not only provide the factual information, but also carry nationallymarked load. The authors maintain that despite the presence of some fundamental studies devoted to structural and semantic aspects of allusions, the ways of preserving and reflecting certain lingual and cultural information in the Ukrainian translations of English texts, the issue of rendering this information conveyed by allusions in the texts of English (American) political speeches has not been sufficiently investigated. Thus, the aforementioned justifies the urgent character of the given research. The work aimed at determining the tactics and linguistic means of representing lingual and cultural realia in the texts of English inaugural speeches and their Ukrainian translations. The conducted study revealed that allusions in the analyzed texts render lingual and cultural information alluding to both textual and non-textual referents. The textual referents are represented by one’s own previous speeches, speeches of other politicians, biblical texts, folklore works, texts of state documents etc.; non-textual referents are the names of historical events, historical buildings, geographical features etc. The difficulty in preserving the lingual and cultural information in the translation can be justified by several factors, such as difficulties with identifying allusions in the text in case of non-nominated allusions as well as selection of the appropriate tactics of translation. The analysis proved that the linguistic and cultural information contained in allusions is mostly preserved in Ukrainian translations of the corresponding English-language texts of political speeches. Herewith, the kind of translation tactics and techniques depend on the type of the allusion — direct allusions are most commonly translated with the employment of transcription, transliteration, translation loans; indirect allusions — by means of contextual substitution, transposition, extension and omission.

«Башкирский текст» в прозе С. П. Злобина

The research aims to analyse the peculiarities of representation of the Bashkir cultural, historical and natural space in S. P. Zlobin’s prose. The paper identifies the main elements of the “Bashkir text” functioning in the novels “Salavat Yulaev” and “On the Steep Path”. Scientific originality of the research lies in taking the structural-semiotic and imagological approaches to the study of the “Bashkir text” of the Russian writer. As a result of the study, the researchers have identified the role and semantics of the text-forming elements of S. P. Zlobin’s “Bashkir text”, among which the toponymy of the region (Yuruzen, Ural, Yaik), images of historical figures - leaders of uprisings (Salavat Yulaev, Batyrsha etc.), historical and cultural realia (nomad camp, nomad’s tent, kumis, kurai etc.) stand out. The folklore and mythological principle is noted in the geopoetics of the works (the motif of Sh’gali-Shakman’s bow, sacralisation of Mount Nars, description of Bashkir rituals and customs). Special attention is paid to representation of the speech portrait and the Muslim mentality of Bashkir characters by the Russian author.

Translation and Adaptation of Culture-Bound Words in Subtitles: A Case Study of the Lithuanian Historical Drama Film Emilia. Breaking Free

Summary The publication deals with the problem cultural realia and terms in translation. The empirical part is a case study that investigates challenges in subtitling when rendering the subtitles of the Lithuanian memory film Emilia. Breaking Free (2017) from Lithuanian into German and English. Subtitling, the oldest form of Audiovisual Translation, is both a process and a result when a source text is translated into the target text in a synchronized manner with the original verbal message. Serious translation problems can arise because the subtitles are supposed to convey the verbal or non-verbal message in a compressed form. Cultural realia and terms are cultural elements that structure human life from the time of birth to the extent that they shape our behavior and worldview. Moreover, since the areas referred to by real property descriptions can be very diverse, they are subject to different classifications depending on the character and the object. Accordingly, monocultural, infracultural and transcultural references can be subdivided more precisely into socio-political, geographical, ethnographic and non-verbal realia. When transferring realia, three large groups of translation strategies can be identified: the unchanged adoption of the realia in the target language, the omission and the replacement by an equivalent. Since most translation techniques in the corpus studied appear as strategies of change, the central question is to what extent linguistic and cultural-specific items can be reflected in the subtitling movies about traumatic historical experiences.

Mīts par Piramu un Tisbi no Ovidija “Pārvērtību” IV grāmatas. Atdzejojumu versijas

This paper provides a chronological overview of the Latvian translations of the poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso with an in-depth look at its most frequently translated passage, “Pyramus and Thisbe”, from Book IV. The aim of the research is to reveal the journey of the interpretations of Ovid’s poem through the Latvian cultural environment by comparing the translation attempts of Ernests Dinsbergs (1851), Leimaņu Bernhards (1882), Nikolajs Vīksniņš (1920) and Augusts Ģiezens (1937). The theoretical basis of the comparison is Lawrence Venuti’s distinction between the strategies of domesticating and foreignizing. The empirical part of the research deals with the rendering of proper nouns, translations of Roman cultural realia, the transfer of artistic expression, and the treatment of the poem’s meter – the dactylic hexameter. The research found that although there are few translations of the poem and they demonstrate differences both in the understanding and interpretation of the source text, a tradition of translating Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” has indeed been established in the Latvian cultural environment. However, the finding of such a tradition does not exclude the possibility of creating new interpretations, especially considering that “Metamorphoses” are still not fully translated in Latvian, and the original text offers a very promising outlook for the application of various translation strategies in regard to content as well as form.

STRUCTURE AND SEMANTICS OF ALLUSION-REALIA IN THE FUNCTION OF EVALUATION PREDICATES AND RELATIVE ALLUSIVE EVALUATION PREDICATES

Objective. The objective of the article is to analyze the structure and semantics of allusions-realia in the function of evaluative predicates and relative allusive evaluation predicates. Methods. The main scientific results are obtained using a set of general scientific and special research methods, namely: analysis, generalization and systematization of scientific and educational literature on literary studies, psychology, linguistics; theoretical generalization, analysis and synthesis, as well as comparative, descriptive and analytical Results. The article considers allusive evaluation predicates represented by a wide range of structural and semantic diversity. Results. Allusive evaluation predicates are subdivided, by the nature of the interaction of the allusion denotation with the object of evaluation, into comparative, based on the comparison of the object of evaluation with the allusion denotation on the principle of their similarity, polarity or asymmetry, and relative based on his knowledge or attitude to the allusion denotation, or on the basis of the imaginary involvement of the object in a particular event, or its imaginary connection with some famous person, as a result of which the object acquires characteristics associated with the event or personality. In the form of textual representation, allusive evaluation predicates can be resembling of cultural realia and names of famous people, author’s occasionalisms, reviews of quotes, proverbs, sayings. In addition, denotations of allusions may undergo, at the discretion of the author, some modifications in order to maximize the specification of the evaluative meaning or its intensification. Regarding allusions-realia, it should be noted that theoretically any realia could be included in the evaluation of judgments, both positive and negative, because it can be viewed from different points of view. Still, in most cases, every fact gets in the minds of people or rather positive or rather negative colour. Therefore, being included in the work of art, realia brings with it its original sign, which can be preserved or changed depending on the light in which realia is presented.

Sovietisms as cultural, social and historical realia in English retranslations of Bulgakov's The Fatal Eggs

AbstractMikhail Bulgakov's fantastic short story The Fatal Eggs (1925) was translated into English by five translators, Mirra Ginsburg (1964), Kathleen Gook-Horujy (1990), Hugh Aplin (2003), Michael Karpelson (2010), and Roger Cockrell (2011). The emphasis in this research is on the linguistic analysis of the translations of cultural, social and historical realia referred to as Sovietisms, which pertain to items characteristic of Soviet discourse in the 1930s. Bulgakov's language is brimming with Soviet vocabulary that refers to various cultural and socio-political elements of Soviet reality. A complete naturalization or even omission of Sovietisms may lead to loss of connotative meanings essential to understanding the context, while foreignizing through transliteration or calquing may disturb the fluency of reading. The purpose of the analysis is to assess the translators' choices and what they imply for the readers. Another aim is to test the assumptions of re-translation theory (Bensimon 1990; Gambier 1994), which states that early translations are more target-oriented than subsequent translations. The analysis employs taxonomies suggested by Vlakhov and Florin (1980) and Mokienko and Nikitina (1998) for the classification of Sovietisms, and Aixelá’s taxonomy of translation strategies (1996) as the grounds for the case study.

Pejorative Lexis as Te Means of Criticism of the 16th Century Russian Realia in the Treatise of the Russe Common Wealth by Giles Fletcher

Te research aims at analyzing the lexical aspect of foreign criticism of Russia at an early stage of establishing international relations. Te article focuses on the role of pejorative lexis and phraseology used by an English diplomat Giles Fletcher to expose to criticism Russian social, cultural and common realia in his treatise On the Russe Common Wealth written in 1591. Te research fnds out the main objects and grounds of the country’s negative evaluativity dispensed by the author, puts to analysis diverse lexical means with inherent negative evaluation, reveals their functions in the text. Criticism is underpinned by the author’s intention against the historical background of the deteriorating Anglo-Russian relations caused by the competing interests of the two nations. Te part that effects evaluation is the late 16th century English society represented by Giles Fletcher, a public ofcer and politician. Specifc objects of his criticism are persons and groups (monarchs, nobility, peasantry, clergy, etc.), national character of the Russian people, and social institutions (administration, political regime, law and judicial system, fnanceand economy, the Orthodox church, etc.). Criticism of Russian realia in the treatise is mainly manifest on the lexical level by virtue of the extensive use of pejorative substantives and metaphoric idioms. As to the function, negative evaluativity on the lexical level expresses the author’s emotions and presents the characteristics of persons and ethnospecifc phenomena.

CREAM MERINGUES VS A DIVINE T-SHIRT: CATALAN IDENTITY IN THE SPANISH SPORTS DISCOURSE

This paper aims to make a sketch in the investigation of the representation of the Catalan identity that is inextricably linked to FC Barcelona in the contemporary Spanish sports discourse from its linguistic perspective within the sociocultural premises. The corpus of the data we have analyzed is translated from the most important Spanish sports newspapers As, Marca, Mundo Deportivo and Sport in the range of 2012-2015, as well as from the books of publicist style, with a particular attention paid to some headlines of the articles to the Champions League Final, World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup. The methods we used are critical discourse analysis, linguisitic description with elements of sociolinguistic research. It was revealed that both newspapers and books of journalistic and artistic styles are filled with lexical units from Catalan language: from slogans up to toponyms, anthroponyms, or cultural realia. The lexical item lo catalán (“Catalan” and “Catalonia”) is incorporated into the broad range of speeches and written texts. The official status of this language is regularized in the Statute of FC Barcelona. The incorporation of the Catalan language is manifested in the discourse of players and coaches, Statutes of FC Barcelona, slogans, toponyms, anthroponyms and cultural realia. We also analyzed the role of deictic markers as an expressive dominant of the texts that constitute the fan-position of the above-mentioned sports newspapers. It was exposed the clear presence of two units of discourse madridismo and barcelonismo that have sociocultural meaning to define the tendency of the rivalry between two sports clubs that goes beyond the mere sport. Sarcasm, irony, and humor are the main communicative strategies of their construction in the contemporary Spanish sports discourse.

КУЛЬТУРНІ РЕАЛІЇ У СЛОВАЦЬКИХ І ЧЕСЬКИХ МНОЖИННИХ ПЕРЕКЛАДАХ РОМАНІВ І. ГОНЧАРОВА: ДИНАМІКА ПЕРЕКЛАДАЦЬКИХ РІШЕНЬ

The article defines the reasons influencing the translation decisions as to recreation of cultural realia in the Slovak and Czech multiple translations of I. Goncharov’s key novels. It has been found that ethnocultural elements of the text, first of all the realia, can be a source of mistakes when translated since the modern generations of readers do not possess the background knowledge on the level needed for the perception of important information contained in the classics’ works, in particular in those by I. Goncharov. That is why a contemporary translator must introduce the reader to the elements of the text connected with the life of people, their culture and world outlook when works of art are being translated. The knowledge of material and moral realia, customs and traditions is an integral part of the background knowledge of a writer, a translator and a reader as well. Much depends on a translator’s aspiration to realize the modern readers’ expectations and update the archaic realia when translated in order to bring the past times closer to the present days. This requires a translator’s freedom from an original. This way there is the only possible to preserve artistic peculiarities of an original since translators in the past strived to recreate the precise structure of a text (sentences) by means of literal translation. However, it was an illusion as to the correctness of translation. That is why translators should be aware of the fact that they should preserve the invariant part of the contents of an original, which should be the result of their work. Herewith, translators should maintain all artistic properties of a classic work.