Features of literary translation of the novel “Family Happiness” by Leo Tolstoy

Abstract

   The article studies the features and the techniques of conveying culture-bound words in Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Family Happiness”, translated into English by Aylmer and Louise Maude. Such lexical units, also known as realia, do not usually have lexical equivalents in other languages, implying objects or phenomena of material culture, ethnic and national characteristics, customs, rituals; consequently, they require a special approach while translating into other languages. We classify culture-bound words, found in the novel, according to their semantics. These words denote: proper names; everyday objects and routines (places, clothes and headdress, food products, types of activities, distance units, forms of addressing people); religion (religious morality, types of worship and items necessary for conducting church rituals according to the Orthodox calendar); elements of state and administrative system. Based on the analysis, the article identifies the main methods of translating realia into the English language, which include transcription and transliteration in the case of proper names, descriptive translation and selection of a functional analogue with such types of lexical and semantic transformations as generalization and specialization in all other cases.