Translation Studies: Theory and Practice
The Translation Studies: Theory and Practice (TSTP) is a double-blind peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Department of Translation Studies of Yerevan State University. It presents original research articles of high standards in all areas of translation. The journal appears in two issues per annum. Papers submitted to the journal should be written in English. The journal is available both in print and online.
Yerevan State University Publishing House
Rendering Movies through the Prism of Eco-Translatology (Based upon the Ukrainian Dubbed Translations of Oppenheimer and Barbie)
The paper examines eco-translatology in the context of film translation from English into Ukrainian. Its primary aim is to apply an eco-translational approach to audiovisual translation and to identify the linguistic, cultural and communicative shifts that emerge in the process. The study analyzes two of the best-selling films of the 21st century – Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan and Barbie by Greta Gerwig – along with their Ukrainian dubbed versions. The research employs comparative and quantitative content analysis, culture-oriented and translation-focused methods and draws on the core principle of eco-translatology: the holistic perspective. The findings highlight the interdependence of translation, language, culture, humans and nature as integral elements of a unified process of transferring meaning from the source text to the target text.
Copyright (c) 2025 Prof. Gudmanian A., Dr. Ivanova A. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Mapping the Dynamics of Translation Studies (2015–2025): A Systematic Bibliometric Analysis
This study conducts a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to map the key research trends in translation studies from 2015 to 2025. The dataset comprised journal publications indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. The analysis identified 2021 as the most prolific year. Citation patterns revealed that earlier publications, particularly between 2015 and 2016, had the highest average citation rates, with a gradual decline observed in subsequent years. A sustained scholarly interest in traditional translation models was observed. Emerging areas, such as language processing, cognitive linguistics, artificial intelligence integration, governance, corpus linguistics, healthcare translation, and community interpreting, have gained prominence. Collaborative metrics showed contributions from 7,197 authors across 2,528 documents, indicating a moderate level of scholarly collaboration. The University of London was the most productive institution. The United States ranked first in publication output, followed by the United Kingdom and China. The results provide a systematic overview of the impact and advancements in translation studies, highlighting global patterns and identifying directions for future research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Abbas Brashi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Translation of Allusions as a Problem of Cultural Transfer (Based on the Novel Shame by Salman Rushdie)
This article examines the translation of allusions as a key problem of cultural transfer within literary texts, focusing on the Armenian and Russian translations of Salman Rushdie’s novel Shame. The analysis is carried out using intertextual, comparative, and linguacultural methods, which allows us to identify the main strategies for conveying intertextual references. Allusion is a multi-faceted stylistic device that involves the activation of phenomenological precedents relating to literature, mythology, the Bible, history and political events. The challenges of translating allusions concerning Indian mythology and the very complicated political and cultural context for Pakistan necessitate more extralinguistic competence on the part of a reader and the translator. It has been established that adequate transmission of allusions is possible only with a comprehensive approach combining linguistic and cultural-historical knowledge. The results can be useful in the theory and practice of translation, as well as in studies of intertextuality and linguacultural studies.
Copyright (c) 2025 Narine Harutyunyan, Armine Khachatryan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Rhetorical Unit “Silk Road” from the Perspectiveof Political Discourse Translation
Rhetorical devices, if combined with correctly developed rhetorical strategies, contribute to effective contact with the listeners and prove to be powerful means of immediate impact upon the audience. Figures of speech are among the most significant rhetorical devices, which intensify the expressiveness and emotional impact of a political speech. The term “Silk Road” possessing a long-lasting historical past, has currently acquired metaphorical properties and is often used as a rhetorical device by politicians in different countries and in various circumstance. When public speeches are translated, both the language and socio-cultural context should be carefully examined to maintain the persuasive impact of the original message on the target audience. Hence, a well-done pre-translation discourse analysis of the ST (the text of the uttered speech) will let the translator go deeper into the content-conceptual information and the techniques it is specified by, to identify the verbal and non-verbal elements, which capture the receptor’s attention, leading it simultaneously in the direction intended by the speaker. The article focuses on trilingual (Armenian, English, Russian) analysis of the “Silk Road” rhetorical device in RA Prime Minister’s speech, to specify its function through the socio-cultural situation case study and to identify its translation properties. The narrative, discourse and comparative methods of analyses have been used in the course of research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gayane Gasparyan, Mari Arzumanyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
From Storytelling to Translating: On Some Notable Cases of Translation
This paper deals with some atypical cases of translation, renderings whose authors were accomplished ethnographers and folklorists, collectors of oral lore, or storytellers. We will also refer to bilingual storytellers, reciting tales with equal fluency in two languages. The mentioned types of translators are characteristic of cultures that, alongside homeland storytelling, also have diasporic storytelling communities. Our study is primarily based on “Hazaran Blbul” (The Bird of a Thousand Voices), one of the most popular Armenian fairy tales. The chosen texts are not translations in the traditional sense; they are rendered from oral narratives. Some of the original texts are no longer available. Accordingly, we deal with unique cases with absent source texts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alvard Jivanyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Analytical Review of the Impact of Martial Law on the Adaptation of English Terminology in Ukraine
Martial Law in Ukraine, initiated due to Russia’s large-scale invasion in 2022, has significantly impacted various aspects of the country’s life, including linguistic processes. In globalisation and active collaboration with international organisations, English is crucial in professional communication, particularly in defense, medical, technical and humanitarian fields. This study aims to review the impact of martial law on the adaptation of English terminology in Ukraine. The methods included structured interviews with students studying English and practising translation, surveys to collect quantitative data on challenges encountered while adapting English military terminology (the study focuses on military texts originating from the United States and the United Kingdom) into Ukrainian and observations of educational sessions. A total of 43 academic works were selected to explore the article’s topic, conduct a comparative educational analysis and delve into translation processes and neology issues. The study involved 45 participants, including 15 students. The results revealed that incorporating English military terminology into Ukrainian has significantly accelerated and acquired new characteristics. The analysis of relevant literature uncovered the peculiarities of translating military terminology from diachronic and synchronic perspectives. The research findings have shown that English military terminology presents significant challenges and complexities in translation, as it serves both an expressive and a referential function. The exotic nature of these borrowed terms indicates connotative intensification, reflecting an ideologically rather than terminologically driven segmentation of extralinguistic reality.
Copyright (c) 2025 Vitalina Tarasova, Iryna Miroshnychenko, Svitlana Shestakova, Tetiana Chukhno, Anna Maksymova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Fragile Boundary of the Word: Valery Bryusov in Vahan Terian’s Translation
This article presents an examination of all the poems by Valery Bryusov, a leading figure of Russian Symbolism, that were translated into Armenian by Vahan Terian, one of Armenia’s most lyrical poets. These translations, spanning over a decade, reveal not only Terian’s deep engagement with Russian Symbolism but also his unique ability to reimagine Bryusov’s poetic world through the lens of Armenian lyric tradition. Rather than offering literal renditions, Terian’s translations preserve the philosophical depth, emotional intensity and symbolic imagery of the original texts while transforming them with new rhythms, cultural references and spiritual tones. Through a close comparative analysis, the study explores how key themes, such as solitude, memory, loss, the metaphysics of time, etc. are reinterpreted poetically. The article argues that Terian functions not merely as a translator but as a poetic co-creator, whose works offer a rare example of artistic dialogue across languages, cultures and systems of symbols.
Copyright (c) 2025 Meri Hovhannisyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Romanian Literature in British Translation Prizes
As a component of a larger project on translation awards, this article examines the presence of literary works originally written in Romanian in recent iterations of four prominent British prizes for literary translation: the EBRD Literature Prize, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the International Booker Prize, and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. Noting that Romanian is the official language in both Romania and Moldova, the article opens by outlining the necessary linguistic, literary, and sociohistorical background, before moving to the British context by presenting the framework and scope regarding the four selected literary translation awards. After scrutinising the longlists, shortlists, and winners of the awards to determine the presence of translated Romanian-language works, the analysis is discussed and then briefly compared with some of the project’s other findings.
Copyright (c) 2025 Antony Hoyte-West https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Historical Development of Concepts and Their Designations: The Latvian Terms Grāmatvedība (‘Accounting’) and Grāmatvedis (‘Accountant’)
Identification of the heritage of Latvian terminology and past processes. Detailed research is important for documenting the history of language development and standardization and successful terminological work today. This article examines the relationship between two important accounting concepts and concept designations in Latvian – grāmatvedība (‘accounting’) and grāmatvedis (‘accountant’), which are characterized by attempts to Latvianize and the obvious influence of contact languages. The influence of the Latvian contact languages, German and Russian, also plays a role in the variation and change of terms. The study uses about 75 excerpts (microtexts) from 18th- to 20th-century Latvian written sources (dictionaries, books, and periodicals) collected by Juris Baldunčiks (1950–2022). The onomasiological approach was used to analyze the material. The material under study shows that by 1918, a considerable range of economic and financial terms had already been established in the Latvian language. Still, the most significant changes occurred in the 1870s.
terminology, terminology history, onomasiological approach
Copyright (c) 2025 Juris Baldunčiks, Silga Svike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Paradigm Shifts for Literary Translation
My essay argues that there have been important paradigm shifts for the translation of Arabic literature to English during the last century from Orientalist to Civilization Studies and to Modeling, for example.
Copyright (c) 2025 William Maynard Hutchins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Methods of Translating Non-Russian Proper Nouns Employed in Russian Texts
The present article deals with proper noun (PN) translation concentrating on the issue of non-Russian PNs employed in Russian texts. While the Italian translation tradition has in general opted for the method of transliteration of all PNs from Russian Cyrillic regardless of the name origins, a decolonizing approach would be that of considering non-Russian PNs as ‘translated’ terms from a third language. This approach will prove useful in expanding our understanding of how translation (and transliteration) may influence the perception of specific cultural and ethnic contexts embedded within source texts. In this article, examples of Kyrgyz, Armenian, Georgian, Azeri, and Belarusian PNs (from Victoria Lomasko’s The Last Soviet Artist) are provided. Avoiding intermediary translation (transliteration) from Russian Cyrillic, the translator (and author of this article) decided to reconstruct the original PNs encountered in the source text. The article thus discusses the reasons for the employment of such method when approaching PNs that are ‘mediated’ in the context of the source text, showing how this helps in decolonizing translation.
Copyright (c) 2024 Martina Napolitano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Translation of Russian Business Slang Phraseology in Italian: Focus on Intermediary Language to Avoid Ambiguities
In recent years Russia has changed rapidly from a socio-economic point of view. The economic changes have led to the development of slang phraseological units (herefrom, PUs) in the business communication. The Russian jargon PUs are taken from the dictionary Pochti seryoznyj slovar’ delovogo obscheniya (Pogrebnyak: 2007) and are translated into Italian, mostly via English, functioning as Intermediary Language (herefrom, IL). The materials consist in Russian slang PUs that are ambiguous, as it appears hard to understand, whether they are calques from IL or properly Russian expressions. The study underlines the importance of the IL to avoid ambiguity and of the idiomatic translation to both understand business culture and language. The functional equivalence is also taken into account as an interlinguistic equivalence strategy needed to find a communicative coincidence between Source Language (herefrom, SL) and Target Language (herefrom, TL) contexts. To conclude, the work attempts to facilitate informal business communication between Russian and Italian partners and to mitigate misunderstandings that may arise in the presence of cultural differences between the two countries.
Copyright (c) 2024 Alessandra Marabini https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Promoting and Spreading Sakha Ethnocultural Identity through the Mediation of the Russian Language: The Phenomenon of Yakut Cinema
The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is nowadays one of the main centres of cinematographic production in the Russian Federation. Films are often low-budget and boast a wide spectrum of genres. They are mostly shot in the Sakha language and draw on local history, heroic epic, cosmogony, heritage, costumes, and spiritual values. In the present work the phenomenon of Yakut cinema is investigated as a means to promote and consolidate the ethnocultural Sakha identity in the Republic. To explore this issue, I briefly describe the sociolinguistic context, featuring the Sakha Republic. Further, I provide an overview of Yakut cinema, examining the process of its rapid development, and identifying its main themes and characteristics. Then, I discuss the resonance of Yakut films, which goes beyond the local context. A dozen of Yakut movies have screened at international film festivals, reaching out to the global audience by means of indirect translation, i.e., from Sakha to English, via the Russian language. As a result, the Russian language plays a pivotal role in the circulation of Sakha cinema, and hence, Sakha identity on the world stage.
Copyright (c) 2024 Giorgia Pomarolli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Categories of Shifts in the Translation of the English Holy Bible (New International Version) into Dholuo Bible: Muma Maler Mar Nyasaye (1976)
This paper describes the categories of shifts in the translation of the English Holy Bible; New International Version (NIV) into Dholuo Bible Muma Maler mar Nyasaye (1976). The aim is to evaluate the relevance of the translator’s style in rendering a religious text into the target language and the overall implication on the translation theory and practice. The data is collected through document analysis and Focus Group Discussions. We analyzed forty rank shifted segments purposively from six books from the source and target text based on the Relevance Theory by Sperber & Wilson (1986). The analysis is limited to rank-shifting at the level of clauses utilized in the source language which is translated into the target language. The data is analyzed using content analysis and descriptive method. The following categories of shifts are identified; structure shifts, unit shifts, class shifts and intra-system shifts. This study offers insight to bible translators to understand that since shifts are unavoidable in translation, they should aim to produce a target text that is as accurate and precise as possible to guard against loss of meaning. To do this, translators must understand the original source text and transfer it faithfully and accurately. Moreover, bible translators must understand the context of both the source text and the target text since context plays a great role in rendering translation.
Copyright (c) 2024 Colleta Akoth Owino, Benard Mudogo, David Barasa, Rose Auma https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Role of Mediated Translation in Children’s Literature from Cross-Cultural Pragmatics Standpoint: Gianni Rodari’s Adventures of Cipollino in Russian And Armenian
The current thesis zooms in on how the concept of cross-cultural pragmatics can bring forth a theoretical background for mediated translation practice, particularly taking into account equivalence. In this day and age, the criteria for highlighting translation pragmatics of literary texts embrace the vast practical experience, insights into the translation theory, and cross-cultural similarities and dissimilarities set in the mediated translation of children’s literature. The article is an attempt to uncover crucial cross-cultural elements of the present-day and past translations of children’s literature via mediated language from the translation pragmatics perspective. In the research, we mainly projected a plethora of latent linguostylistic nuances of the author’s style through intermediary language. The data analysis was conducted based on the descriptive-comparative method assuming as a cornerstone semantic and pragmatic strategies suggested by A. Chesterman.
Copyright (c) 2024 Irina Mkhitaryan, Diana Hayroyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Problems of Mediated Translation in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
Mediated translation as a linguistic and literary phenomenon is of great interest in terms of studying the linguistic, structural, and linguo-cultural aspects of languages involved in the translation process. Despite the ambiguous attitudes of translation studies theorists and practitioners, translation through an intermediate language remains significant for the representation of distinct literatures from the perspective of different cultures. In fact, mediated translation seeks to understand the dynamics between the source and target languages, cultures, and communicative contexts, and how they can influence the translation process. Overall, the main goal is to gain insights into the translation process and its implications for communication and understanding between different languages and cultures. In recent years mediated translation has become a more popular concept in translation studies research field. This growing popularity is evident from the noticeable increase in the number of academic events and scientific publications on the topic. The current study aims at conducting a comparative analysis of the mediated translations of the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe in English, Russian, and Armenian. An attempt has been made to illustrate the influence of intermediary language on the adequacy and equivalence of the translation of the abovementioned work highlighting the inconsistencies in the translation process. Basing on the research several conclusions have been drawn.
Copyright (c) 2024 Nona Harutyunyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Mediated Translation of Films: A Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Analysis of “Gone in 60 Seconds”
The present study focuses on the notion of equivalence in film translation through comparative analysis that enables to get new insights into its lexical, grammatical and stylistic peculiarities. Translating films involves careful consideration of various elements, adding complexity to the process of translation for this particular medium. Different approaches employed by translators in rendering the text significantly impact the attainment of equivalence in the realm of film translation. This objective is fulfilled by exploring key methods of film translation, notably dubbing and subtitling, along with their widespread use and the evolution of their history. One of the most complicated tasks in film translation is to accurately transfer the linguistic features and cultural values into the target language. The data analysis of the research aims to reveal the role of intermediary language in film translation. The text analysis utilized in this study relies on qualitative analysis. By comparing the source text with the target one, an attempt has been made to highlight their similarities and differences and whether the source text has undergone any major transformations in the course of mediated translation. Thus, some linguistic and cultural issues dealing with mediated translation have been examined and a number of conclusions have been drawn.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lusine Sargsyan, Markuhi Voskanyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A Literata Translator from Russian into Italian: Enrichetta Capecelatro Carafa, Duchess of Andria
In this paper, I focus on the writer and translator Enrichetta Capecelatro Carafa (1863-1941), who signed all her translations from Russian into Italian, from the 1920s until her death, with the pseudonym Duchess of Andria. Reconstructing the trajectory of this prolific and talented translator means shedding light on one of the many profiles of women translators who worked hard in the early decades of the 20th century to introduce foreign literature into Italy. The case of the Duchess of Andria is emblematic, and at the same time original, for how she approached literary translation, for the number of translations she signed, and for the valuable legacy, still partly unexplored, that she left in the field of translations from Russian. The aim of this work is therefore to document a significant case study, with a brief foray into the field of translation criticism of Chekhov's short stories, translated and prefaced by the Duchess and published in 1936 by Utet.
Copyright (c) 2024 Giulia Marcucci https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Self-Translation and the Translator’s (In)visibility in Nabokov’s Pnin (1957)
Nabokovian scholarship has consistently emphasised the plurilingual aspects in Nabokov’s oeuvre. His American novels frequently include numerous sentences in Russian and French, which are often translated or discussed from a metalinguistic angle by the author. A remarkable example in this regard is the autobiography Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited (1966), which conjures up various places where Nabokov spent different periods of his life, along with the languages overlapping in his European memoirs. Considering that the coexistence of foreign terms and expressions is common in Nabokov’s works, this article aims to analyse the linguistic architecture and aspects of self-translation in one of his American novels, Pnin. While this study dwells on the numerous grammatical and phonetic inaccuracies that feature in the protagonist’s dialogues, it also means to investigate the issue pertaining to the translator’s (in)visibility in the text. The analysis will be carried out in light of Venuti’s (2018) theories, which foreground the crucial yet often overlooked role of the translator, particularly in contexts where translation is domesticated. By quoting various examples of self-translated expressions from the novel, as well as grammatical and phonetic mistakes, the article traces the linguistic borders in the story, shedding light on the work of the translator, whose presence becomes discernible through the foreignizing effect generated by the numerous non-English words, mistakes and inaccuracies. The work thus engages with the issue of Nabokov’s (in)visibility in the story, since the translator’s presence is not always detectable as the storyline progresses. The alternation of domestication and foreignization, linguistic adaptation and estrangement, is infused with the writer’s investigation into his linguistic past which, in Cronin’s (2013, 19) words, sheds light on the “historical sense” of the languages employed. The exploration of Nabokov’s linguistic past, expressed through numerous foreignisms, paves the way for an analysis of the writer’s double, thereby providing a more nuanced illustration of Nabokov’s linguistic transition.
Copyright (c) 2024 Michele Russo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Coming of Age Novel in Ukrainian Translation: Challenges and Solutions
The present paper makes at attemp to analyse the genre of the coming of age novel in the light of modern translation studies. The research is based on the Ukrainian translation of the coming of age novel “The Queen’s Gambit” by Walter Tevis. The dominant genre peculairities such as the issue of upbringing, symbolism realized in the depiction of chess game and the author`s peculiarities of character portrayal have been analyzed. Contextual substitution, transposition, concretization, omission, addition, antonymic translation are considered to be the dominant translation transformations used by the translator to convey the genre specificity of the coming of age novel.
coming of age novel, translation transformations, upbringing, characters’ portrayal, genre specifity in translation
Copyright (c) 2024 Artur Gudmanian, Andriana Ivanova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Sight Translation as a Pedagogical Tool in Teaching Interpretation of Political Texts
In translation teaching, sight translation has been used, for decades, as a pedagogical tool to enhance students’ interpreting skills in a myriad text genres. In this study, sight translation was used as a pedagogical tool to teach translation and interpretation of political texts to 37 undergraduate third year students of the academic year 2022/2023 at the university of Dodoma, Tanzania. The 3 collected English political speeches were chunked and organized in PowerPoint form to be sight translated into Kiswahili. The student sight translator displayed its content on the wall through a projector which was connected to a personal computer. When sight translating, the other students were comparing his/her verbal renditions into the target language with the content in the source language which was displayed on the wall through a projector. The study revealed that some English political expressions that refer to the address forms of the heads of state and government, the official residence of the heads of state and government, titles of foreign dignitaries, the etiquette of recognizing meeting attendees, and the capital city when used to denote a government or country could not be easily sight translated into Kiswahili for a number of reasons. Despite the challenges that sight translation may encounter during implementation, it remains a friendliest, adaptable, and inclusive pedagogical tool in translation and interpretation classes in all levels of learning.
Copyright (c) 2024 Kulwa Matalu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Im Wald, im Holzhaus by Michael Krüger and Its Polish Translation: Translation as Intervention
This article deals with the Polish translation of the poetry volume by the German poet Michael Krüger, Im Wald, im Holzhaus. German translations, although present in Poland since the Middle Ages, have been characterized by a certain foreignness since the Romantic era. This resulted from the fact that German culture was perceived as hostile and threatening in Poland, which reflected numerous wars and conflicts between the two states. It seems that in recent years this attitude has been changing, as evidenced by the Polish edition of Krüger’s collection of poems. Moreover, publishing the book in 2023 might be seen as an intervention against the political situation in Poland where the conservative government tried to escalate Polish-German animosities.
translations of German literature into Polish
Copyright (c) 2024 Paweł Marcinkiewicz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Key Cultural Texts and Translation as a Creative Act of Cultural Mediation
This research was carried out with reference to AHRC (UK) funded network project “Translating Cultures” 2014-2018.[1] The project aimed to underscore the role of language, rhetoric, and semiotics in both textual and non-textual communication, examining these concepts in their “initial expressions” and through their translations and reinterpretations across different languages and mediums. Translating cultural texts is among the most challenging tasks for a translator, as it involves navigating numerous cultural nuances and differences. Poetry, in particular, is the most challenging genre to translate. This research focuses on Antanas Baranauskas’s lyrical Romantic poem Anykščių Šilelis (En. The Forest of Anykščiai), chosen because (1) it is a key cultural text written in East High Lithuanian dialect that portrays the former beauty of a pine grove near Baranauskas’s village and its destruction under the Russian rule,. symbolising Lithuania’s struggles under the Tsarist regime and, (2) it is one of the most frequently translated Lithuanian works, with versions in 19 languages. The study delves into two English translations by Nadas Rastenis (1956) and Peter Tempest (1985), highlighting the different strategies each translator employed. The results of the study demonstrate that translation is never neutral; each decision made by the translator reflects both the original culture and the target audience’s culture, resulting in a text that serves as a conduit for understanding across linguistic and cultural boundaries. [1] More information is available at https://www.bbk.ac.uk/news/ahrc-funded-research-project-translating-cultures.
Copyright (c) 2024 Loreta Ulvydiene Huber https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Polish and English Translations of Horst Bienek and the Question of Silesian Identity
Horst Bienek (1930-1990) was one of the greatest German writers of the twentieth century. He was born in Gleiwitz, in Upper Silesia, and his works contain many references to Silesian culture and language. This, however, is often overlooked in his translations, both into Polish and English. It seems that Bienek’s Germanness is overwhelming for his translators who see in him a contemporary embodiment of Sehnsuht – a nostalgic desire for the past. However, the most important aspect of Bienek’s writing is his multiculturalism, expressed in the use of toponyms, but also dialectical lexical elements. They play an important role in the work of the Upper Silesian writer, because thanks to them it is possible to express the historical truth of the complicated relations between Poles, Silesians and Germans.
Copyright (c) 2024 Daniel Pietrek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Translation Properties of Vulgar and Invective Vocabulary in Political Media Discourse
The present research is an attempt to specify vulgar and invective vocabulary in modern political media discourse and to determine their translation properties (from English into Russian and Armenian, from Russian into English and Armenian, from Armenian into English and Russian) within the frames of pragmatic and socio-cultural discourse analyses. The article aims at indicating the language code differences in terms of cultures. Such analysis fosters also the determination of ways and methods of transmitting discrepancies between positive and negative connotations of various language units and to create the balance of emphatic equivalence when translating from source languages (SLs) into target languages (TLs). Invectives contain universal cultural values, they indicate aggression, anger, hostility and indignity. To translate invective proverbs, aphorisms, jargon, obscenities, the translator uses various transformations to pragmatically adapt them for the target cultural environment, since the source culture cognitive principles do not always coincide with those of the target culture.
Copyright (c) 2024 Gayane Gasparyan, Meri Ishkhanyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Role of Intermediary Languages in Literary Translations from Russian into Italian: A Brief Historical Survey
On the background of the historical development of literary translation from Russian into Italian, the present study will focus on some examples of translations made through intermediate languages. In fact, translating from an intermediary language may lead to well-known adverse effects, such as distortion of the contents or deviations from the original text, but it may also provide interesting insights about intercultural dialogue. The purpose of the work is to highlight some of the problematic areas resulting from these types of translation processes, analysing concrete examples of literary products in which the mediation, mainly through French editions, may affect the content and the form of the original text on the syntactic, semantic and stylistic plans. We will also consider to what extent the loss and gain of meaning have taken place because of such shifts. In this respect, it could be argued that in intermediary translation the employment of adaptation strategies is an important element to produce an acceptable and fluent text to the “receptor language” audience.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ilaria Remonato https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Mediated Translation between Italian and Russian Languages
La forza del destino was commissioned to Giuseppe Verdi by the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres in 1861, and premiered in November 1862, at the Bolshoy Kamenny Theatre. The opera was written on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, and draws its subject from the Spanish drama Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, by Ángel de Saavedra, through an Italian version by Faustino Sanseverino, and with insertions of fragments from Schiller’s trilogy Wallengstein. In this paper I analyse the genesis of the opera, considering the typical derivation of Italian operatic librettos from pre-existing literary works, a process that combines mediated and inter-semiotic translation. This allows me to show the artistic resources offered by mediated translation in the field of stage literature. On another level of discussion, given that for the Premiere Apollon Grigor’yev translated the libretto from Italian to Russian, I consider the role of translation on the reception of this subject by the local audience.
Copyright (c) 2024 Anna Giust https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in Italian: Analyzing the Influence of Michel Delines’ French Version
This article presents a brief history of Italian rhythmical translations of Modest Mussorgsky's libretto for his opera Boris Godunov, each apparently drawing on Michel Delines’ French version from 1908. The author explores the possibility of studying the opera's reception in Italy in connection with the reception of its translations and conducts a brief comparative analysis of four Italian versions of the opera (two from 1908, one from 1909, and one from 1978) alongside both the original and the French version, using one fragment as an example. The paper also aims to draw attention to the lack of serious studies on opera translations and the translators themselves, emphasizing their role as mediators between different cultures.
Copyright (c) 2024 Anna Stetsenko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Paradigms of Mediated Translation in Armenian: An Exploration
This paper examines four discreet issues influencing the macro-context of mediated translations into Armenian from Late Antiquity to the modern period. The first treats religious scripture, reviewing the very different contexts for the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (5thcentury) and the Qur’ān (17th century). The second analyzes the Silk Route as a vehicle for exchange between peripheral cultures facilitating the Armenian reception of two works of Sanskrit literature. The third pursues evolving literary traditions and their textual diffusion via a case study of the Alexander Romance. Meanwhile, the fourth examines the nature of colonial experiments in the 18th-19th centuries in creating regionality within the wider process of globalization that impinged on the translation processes of communities in different parts of the Armenian oikoumene of the time with special attention to Mesrop Tałiadian’s novel Vēp Vardgisi of 1846.
Copyright (c) 2024 Peter Cowe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Intermediary Translations of Children’s Literature in Armenian Periodicals of the 19th Century
This article is dedicated to the study of intermediary translations of children’s literature into Eastern Armenian in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Juvenile Periodicals such as Aghbyur and Hasker were prominent publications during the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century and featured a wide range of literary works, including translations of foreign literature. This study is focused on the translations of English literature, however, other languages are also considered. These periodicals, along with others, were important sources of literature and education for Armenian children. They contributed to the development of Armenian children’s literature, fostered a love for reading, and played a vital role in preserving Armenian cultural identity. Additionally, Armenian authors and educators adapted and retold European children’s stories to make them more accessible and relatable to Armenian audiences. This practice allowed for the cultural exchange of ideas and the incorporation of foreign literature into the Armenian literary landscape.
Copyright (c) 2024 Varduhi Baloyan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0