TRANSLATION STUDIES IN RUSSIA

and 17th century
Translation in the 18th century
Translation in the 19th

and early 20th century
Translation in the 20th and 21th century

Testament, Psalter, the Prayer Book
word-for-word rendering

anonymous
Scholarly translations included topics in astronomy, astrology, arithmetic, geometry, anatomy,

medicine

(mostly foreigners: Poles, Germans, Dutchmen or natives from the southern

or western parts of the country)
a few monks who translated only religious books from Latin and Greek (Epiphanius, Slavinezky, Arsenius the Greek, Dionysius the Greek)
the largest group - part-time translators who occasionally made 1 or 2 translations in their spare time
translators who worked on their own initiative and chose the source text they wanted to translate (Andrei Matveev, Bogdanov, Prince Kropotkin)

asserting its originality and its expressive potential
Mikhail Lomonosov
A.P. Sumarokov
V.K. Trediakovsky

authors from Greek, French, Latin, German, English, Italian and some

oriental languages.
Vasily Zhukovsky translated from French, Latin, German, English and Old Russian.
Thanks to him, Russian readers gained access to many works of Schiller, Goethe, Byron, Walter Scott.
Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov played a major role in the history of translation.
Free translation was a dominating strategy.
P.A. Vyazemsky, N.I. Gnedich, A.A.Fet insisted on complete faithfulness to the source text.

multinational state contributed to the growing demand for translation.
Russian

readers become familiar with the great epics from Georgia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and elsewhere.

and transformations in translation.
He distinguished 7 types of lexical

transformations based on the universal character of formal and logical categories.

extension
Exclusive Relations
holistic transformation, compensation
Contradictory Relations
antonymic translation

contextual correspondences.
Professor Retzker’s classification:
1. Types of equivalents
2. Ways of rendering

equivalent – lacking units
Language units are classified into two groups:
those that have equivalents
those that don’t have equivalents

depend in their majority on the context
2) analogy –

TL synonyms correspond to SL words, the choice of which is conditioned by the context
3) descriptive rendering is applied, when foreign words denote notions and phenomena that don’t exist in our life: “to dine with duke Humpry”, “to give a wet Willy”.

and partial.
Equivalents are functional substitutes for SL units. Some SL

units have permanent equivalents in TL. That is one to one correspondence between such units and their equivalents (terms, geographical names).
Full equivalent is presumed when there is a complete coincidence of pragmatic meaning of the SL and TL units.
Pragmatic meaning of a translation equivalent is the reaction of the translation user to the verbal message in TL.

translation process regular equivalents can be defined as lexical phraseological

and grammatical.
Linguistic context in equivalents in subdivided into
immediate
General
The context is the length of speech necessary to specify the meaning and translation of the given word.
Immediate linguistic context is a sequence of syntactic and syntactically related words that determines meaning and syntactic function of the given word and forms the bases for its translation.
General linguistic context is a source text as a whole.

circumstances under which source text was produced as well as

all facts, which the receptor is expected to know, so that we can adequately interpret the message.
An exceptional translation of a SL unit, which suits a particular context can be described as an occasional equivalent or a contextual substitute. The choice of grammatical units depends on semantics.

are:
1) using long words – imitating in target language the

forms of the SL word or word combinations. By this technique we understand using transcription of transliteration exclusively.
2) by transcription of transliteration and explication of their genuine nationally specific meaning. 3) using a descriptive explanation to convey the meaning of the ST unit.

of the nationally-bound lexicon.
5) using appropriate substitutes or semantic analogy,

i.e. words with similar meaning, which is extended to convey information.
6) by ways of word for word translation.
7) using all kinds of lexical transformation modifying the meaning of a SL word.

Equivalent-lacking idioms are translated either by reproducing their form in TL through a word for word translation of by explaining the figurative meaning of the idiom.

translation – when meaning of grammatical unit isn’t rendered in

the translation since it is practically identical to the meaning of some other units and can be safely left out. 2) Approximate translation – when the translator makes use of a TL form, partially equivalent to the equivalent-lacking source language unit. 3) Transformational translation – when the translator resorts to one of the grammatical transformations.

the book “Language and Translation”
collected a lot of material on

the application of correspondences of the Russian and the English languages

one language into a speech product into another language with

the preservation of the unchanged plane of content that is meaning”

of meaning


Referential meaning
Linguistic meaning
Pragmatic meaning

Theory of Translation"1953
suggested creation of the linguistic theory of translation
offered

to distinguish between the Special and the General theory of translation

Translation Studies
A Word on Translation (1973)
Linguistics of Translation (1980)
Theory of

Translation (1990)
Theoretical Basic of Methods of Translator Training (1997)
General Theory of Translation (1999)

Though usually people speak about translation “from one language on

another”, actually, it is not simply a replacement of one language with another. The different cultures, people, ways of thinking, literatures epochs, levels of development, traditions and world vies clash with each other in translation”.

the communicative goal (=the lowest degree of semantic similarity with

the original text)

green with envy because of the success of my competitor.

На кой леший мне такой друг? – What on earth do I need such a friend for?
Could you do me a favor, please? – Пожалуйста, окажите мне услугу.
How do you do! – Здравствуйте!
Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you. – На дворе трава – на траве дрова.
Tiger Tiger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? (W.Blake)
Тигр, Тигр, в лесу ночном
Мрачный взгляд горит огнем.
Чья бессмертная рука
Жизнь влила в твои бока? (Пер. К.Филатовой)

situation (=higher degree of similarity, even though it is not

so evident at first sight)

the bus)
Who shall I say is calling? – Кто его

спрашивает? (the situation on the phone)
Wet paint. – Осторожно: окрашено! (the situation in the park).
Fragile. – Осторожно: стекло!
Beware of the dog! – Осторожно, злая собака!
Push/Pull – От себя/К себе.

method of description (of the situation) (=higher degree of similarity:

it is not only the communicative goal and the situation that are identical, but also the way in which the situation is described)

на свою мать.
He is my son. – Я

- мать этого мальчика.
After her illness, she became as skinny as a toothpick. – После болезни она стала худая, как щепка.
Сегодня Борису не до шуток. – Boris is in no mood for joking today.

(=besides the communicative goal, the situation described, and the manner

of describing the situation, the grammatical structures are also partly identical, i.e. their differences are only due to the differences between the systems of the two languages.

tide. – Большие корабли могут заходить в порт только во

время прилива.
We had a long walk. – Шли мы долго.
Jane was heard playing the piano. – Было слышно, как Джейн играла на пианино.

word semantics (=the maximum possible similarity
Every mother loves her children.

– Каждая мать любит своих детей.
I will write you every week. – Я буду писать тебе каждую неделю.

of equivalence is unilateral, the lower levels presupposing the higher

ones, but not the other way about.
The hierarchy of levels does not imply the degree of evaluation.

translation is a phenomenon that can be studied and described

in an objective and consistent way, using various methods of observation and analysis.

is the comparative analysis of the source and target texts,

as well as various experimental studies of the actual act of translation.

within a linguistic framework.
Most researchers regard the linguistic theory

of translation as an important branch of the linguistic sciences, alongside general linguistics, comparative linguistics, psycho-linguistics, sociolinguistics, text linguistics and other areas of linguistic research.
translation studies in Russia embraces all types of translation.