Humour of “The twelve chairs” by Ilf and Petrov in english arrangement

Abstract

The article deals with analysing the means and methods of translating into English a widely known novel “The Twelve Chairs” by I. Ilf and E. Petrov. The peculiarity of the article lies in consideration of the two novels’ translations, performed by English-speaking interpreters John Richardson and Ann Fisher. Their and some other translators’ turning to “The Twelve Chairs” (the fi rst translation of the book appeared in 1930, while the novel was published in Russia in 1928) testifi es to this work’s popularity at home and the wish to get acquainted the West reader with the writers’ creativity. Written nearly one hundred years ago, this novel is still a favorite book with many Russians. At the very beginning of the article the author considers “the natural substitutions” caused by unrelated language systems and the World Pictures they are contrasted with. One could also observe a number of traditional intricacies in translating lexical and phraseological units of the original text having no correspondence in English as well as the way of searching for their analogies. Quite a new aspect of analysis is presented by estimating the language units, which being considered today as the “wringed” words and expressions, are in abundance in the original. The author gives an evidence to the fact that these words and expressions are differently perceived by the Russian and English speaking people because in Russian they possess connotations their English counterparts lack. These connotations are lexicographically fixed. The methods of translating the cases of a language play which depend on the translator’s creative potential and the sense of humour are also studied. In conclusion the results of the work are summarised and prospects for further research are pointed out.