Comparative analysis of translations of I. A. Bunin’s short story “The Gentleman from San Francisco”

MINISTRY OF SCIENCE AND HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH KAZAKHSTAN NAMED M. AUEZOV

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Subject: Comparative analysis of translations of I. A. Bunin’s short story “The Gentleman from San Francisco”[pic 2]

Student: Azizova Sevara

Group: FI-20-7r

Supervisor of the course work: Beisembaeva Aigul Dairabaevna

Сontent

Introduction

Chapter I Approach to the translation of fiction in modern

1.1 Specificity of literary translation

1.2 The concept of artistic style

Chapter II

San Francisco" in English

2.1 Research methodology

2.2 Translation of abstract nouns

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

This work is devoted to the analysis of translations of the short story by I.A. Bunin "The Gentleman from San Francisco" into English. The study used translations by D.G. Lawrence and S.S. Kotelyansky (1917),

A. Yarmolinsky (1918), B. Guerni (1923), T. Zeltser (1925) and D. Richards (1987). Translations from different time periods were chosen in order to reveal differences in the trends in the translation of Russian classics into English from a diachronic perspective.

Translation of fiction has always been considered the most difficult type of translation activity. The problems of literary translation         have been considered by many domestic and foreign researchers (Alimov, Artemyeva 2010; Vinogradov 1971; Vlakhov , Florin 2021; Kazakova 2001, 2002; Komissarov 1990; Psurtsev 2002; Petrova,

Sdobnikov 2007; Solodub , Albrecht, Kuznetsov 2005; Chernets 1999; Bassnet 2014; Lawrence 2012 and others).

As is well known, translation difficulties are the difficulties of selecting appropriate equivalents, finding similar constructions and lexical and phraseological analogues in order to find adequate replacement techniques ( Retzker 1974).

In addition to grammatical, syntactic and stylistic-syntactic difficulties of translation, when transferring a work of art to another language, it is customary to highlight the following potential problems:

1.        Difficulty in translating individual lexemes of the text, which are quite difficult or impossible to disclose with equivalents or analogues;

2.        The significance of translation interference;

3.        The importance         of preserving the stylistic, figurative elements of the work, as well as the transfer of national features of thinking;

4.        Blurring of criteria for assessing the quality of translations of works of art (Alimova 2012).

Researchers of creativity I.A. Bunina note a number of stylistic differences inherent in this particular author, namely: author's epithets, disharmony of love and death in the text, picturesque and descriptive narration (Trusova 2012). In The Gentleman from San Francisco (1915), a special rhythm of narration can be traced - the alternation of long polypredicative structures and simple short sentences. Presumably, this is due to the author's intention: the desire to convey the features of the hero's perception of reality, his mentality. Simple sentences also play a big role in the process of text formation , as they link larger language units into a single whole. In addition, the novel contains numerous artistic images (symbols) and individual figurative elements (details). In general, these features of the author's style make the task of translating I.A. Bunin into English is a rather difficult problem.

The theoretical basis of the study was the works of domestic and foreign researchers:

•        in the field of translation theory ( Barkhudarov 1975; Komissarov 1990; Nelyubin 2006; Retsker 1974; Fedorov 1983; Schweitzer 1973, etc.);

•        devoted to the general problems of literary translation, pragmatic, linguistic and stylistic aspects of literary translation (Vinogradov 1978; Kazakova 2006; Latyshev 1981; Trukhanova 2013, Suleimanova 2010, etc.).

•        dedicated to the author's style of I.A. Bunin and the features of the work "The Gentleman from San Francisco" ( Abdullina 2018; Averkina 2019; Bugakova , Popova, Sulemina 2020; Davidenko 2015; Zhirova 2016; Kunavin 2015; Kunavin 2015 ; Imanberdieva 2019 ; Levicheva, Tarasova 2020; Rakhaeva 2019; Fedorova 2016 and etc.).

The relevance of the study is due to the wide popularity of the works of I.A. Bunin abroad (Wolfe 1967; Edwards 1957) and the presence of a sufficiently large number of translations of the novel for the period 1917 - 1924 (4), and not all of them received a favorable response among literary critics (Wasiolek 1958 ) . The main objective of this study is to identify successful translation strategies that guarantee the preservation of the individuality of I.A. Bunin.

An attempt is made to analyze the ways of transferring the syntactic features of the source text into English, such as polypredicative structures, attributive phrases, inversion techniques, participial and adverbial phrases, impersonal sentences. It also considers the translation of other units and structures characteristic of the Russian language, which traditionally present translation difficulties: verbal and abstract nouns, words with diminutive suffixes, prefixed verbs, as well as figurative means (epithets, comparisons).

The subject of the study is potential translation difficulties in the field of syntax, vocabulary, pragmatics, which affect the quality of the translation of the short story by I. A. Bunin into English.

The object of this study is the features of the transmission of literary texts in the translation perspective.

The purpose of this thesis research is to conduct a comparative analysis of translations (5) of the short story by I.A. Bunin "The Gentleman from San Francisco" into English.

The purpose of the study determines the setting of the following tasks :

1.        Carrying out a pre-translation analysis of the text and identifying translation difficulties;

2.        Systematization of translation difficulties, determination of the frequency of translation problems;

3.        Commenting on the translation decision;

4.        Identification of the basic principles underlying the translation solution.

methodology includes three stages. At the first stage, sentences with a potential translation problem were selected by continuous sampling from the original work in Russian (the corpus of examples amounted to 176 sentences). At the second stage, with the help of a comparative analysis, different versions of the translation of each identified problem were compared. At the third stage, the analysis and evaluation of the translation solution was carried out.