Information about the author:
Maria R. Nenarokova
Maria R. Nenarokova, DSc in Philology, Leading Research Fellow, 1) A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia; 2) Lomonosov Moscow State University, Lomonosovsky prospekt 27-4, 119991 Moscow, Russia.
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5798-9468
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Abstract:
The article focuses on the problem of reception of translations of Russian classical poetry in the English-speaking culture. The object of study is the poem “The Winter Morning” by A.S. Pushkin, translated into English from 1888 to 2016. The subject of study was the particularities of conveying the content of Pushkin’s poem in English translations. The material for the research was twelve translations of Pushkin’s poem “The Winter Morning”, made by both English and Russian native speakers. The main objective of the research is to determine, with the help of the close reading method, what difficulties translators of Russian poetry may face while translating the poem in question. The study showed that translation of culturally specific vocabulary may become a problem for translators, since some of the realia are typical of Russian everyday life. Sometimes translators introduce into their texts the realia that are lacking in the original. The “key words” of Russian culture are almost impossible to translate due to the differences in the cultural codes of Russia and the English-speaking world. Due to the abundance and variety of texts, close reading of Pushkin’s translations can serve as an excellent training for translators.