Translating into English the Names of Clothing in the Story by M. Gogol “Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”

Abstract.

TRANSLATION OF CLOTHING ITEMS IN NIKOLAI GOGOL’S SHORT-STORY “ST. JOHN’S EVE” INTO ENGLISH

Anna Pavelieva

Germanic Philology and Translation Department, National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”, Poltava, Ukraine.

Alina Shiyan

Germanic Philology and Translation Department, National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”, Poltava, Ukraine.

Abstract

Background: The description of Ukrainian realias is an integral part of the literary image of Ukraine – the central image of Nikolai Gogol’s collections of short-stories “Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka” and “Mirhorod”. Even the Russian-speaking reader did not know all the Little Russian words, so in the foreword of the beekeeper Rudy Panko to the first collection of the short-stories, the names of meals, clothing, household items, weapons, musical instruments and mythological creatures, that may be incomprehensible to the reader, were given in alphabetical order with explanation. Therefore, translating these realias into English requires considerable experience and skill from the translator.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to analyze the peculiarities of translation of clothing items in the literary text of Gogol’s short-story “St. John’s Eve” into English.

Results: The translators of all three variants of the short-story used lexico-grammatical substitutes, loan translation, translational analogues, descriptive translation. Pevear R. and Volokhonsky L with the help of descriptive translation convey Ukrainian realias as close to the text of the original as possible, almost without resorting to grammatical substitutions, thus preserving the author’s atmosphere of the story.

Discussion: When translating clothing items, the translators Pevear R., Volokhonsky L. used the methods of generalization, explication, generic substitution, functional analogues, while Field C. and Gorchakov O. used grammatical replacement, which Pevear R. and Volokhonsky L. tried to avoid.

Keywords: grammatical replacement, loan translation, translational analogue, generalization, explication, generic substitution, functional analogue.

Vitae. Anna Pavelieva is a Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor, Associate Professor of Germanic Philology and Translation Department at National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”. Her areas of research interests include literary history, literary theory, linguistics, Germanic philology, translation and interpretation studies.

Correspondence: kunsite.zi@gmail.com

Vitae. Alina Shiyan is a Master’s student of Germanic Philology and Translation Department at National University “Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic”. Her areas of research interests include Germanic philology, translation and interpretation studies.

Correspondence: alinkashn@gmail.com

Article.

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