Translation of Cultural References into Russian and Spanish in the Works of Vasil Bykov

Abstract

Being socio-cultural mediators, translators play a primary role in preserving cultural diversity by ensuring an adequate quality of translation of literary works, while giving due regard to the socio-cultural context. The success of cross-cultural communication through fiction depends on the adequate adaptation of the original text to the cultural and linguistic peculiarities of the language into which it is translated. Preserving the socio-cultural background of the original text without damaging the integrity and artistic value of the literary text in translation becomes one of the most important tasks of translators. One of the challenges they encounter is rendering lexical units with cultural reference. The main objective of this thesis is to study the prevailing tendencies, strategies and means of rendering the lexical units with cultural references found in the stories written by V. Bykov in Belarusian and translated into Russian and Spanish within the context of adequate translation required for creating the authentic atmosphere and national colouring and for transmitting them to non-specified Russian- and Spanish speaking readers with an intention to minimize translation losses. The research contains an overview of the theories related to cultural aspects of literary translation (R. Leppihalme, F. Lafarga, J. Marco Borillo, J. Franco Aixelá, T. Hermans, B. Hatim and I. Mason, etc.), to cultural references, their definitions, and taxonomies by various criteria (P. Newmark, J. Franco Aixelá, R. Mayoral Asensio, A. Wierzbicka, M. Baker, V.S. Vinogradov, L.S. Barhudarov, V.N. Teliâ, T.F. Novikova, I.R. Gal’perin, E.B. Kolomejceva, S.I. Manina, etc), and to the issues of rendering cultural references in other languages as well as various points of view upon translation strategies and tendencies (J. P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet, P. Newmark, V.V. Sdobnikov, V.N. Komissarov, L. Venuti, etc.). Further research is centred around the terms ‘realia’ and ‘foreign language inclusions’, defined by S. Vlahov and S. Florin, and A.A. Leont’ev, and presents a selection of realias and foreign language inclusions from V. Bykov’s literary works, completed with the continuous sampling method. The adaption of the taxonomies, developed by S. Vlahov and S. Florin, G. Tomahin, and E. Vereŝagin, results in a classification that categorizes realias by various criteria in different groups and subgroups; and the foreign language inclusions are classified by language. Finally, a complex of the means of rendering the selected units into other languages is determined by adapting the strategies proposed by S. Vlahov and S. Florin, combined with the ones observed in the works of T. Kazakova, L. Molina Martínez and A. Hurtado Albir and modified according to the objectives. In conclusion, the research provides the results obtained from the analysis of the selected lexical units. They demonstrate that 1) the employed prevailing means of rendering lexical units with cultural references do not coincide in a closely related language (Russian) and a distant language (Spanish); 2) there is a correlation between the nature of the lexical units with cultural references and the means of rendering them in different languages; 3) a degree of homogeneity or heterogeneity in the means of rendering lexical units with cultural references classified in groups is determined both by the quantity of the units in each group and by the nature of these units with regard to cultural references and differences in a closely related language (Russian) and a distantly related language (Spanish). The factors determining the means of rendering lexical units with cultural references differ and may depend on a degree of linguistic affinity, peculiarities of cultural references, target audience, etc. as well as on the final decision of the translator who aims to transmit the author’s style and to recreate the cultural atmosphere of the literary work successfully.