Artistic realikon as a category of translation studies

Abstract

The article attempts to analyze specific features of rendering realia (artifacts and mentefacts) in translation process. The present study is based on I. Bunin’s short novel “Dry Valley” and its translations into French. Realia are one of the key aesthetic features of I. A. Bunin oeuvre and seriously complicate translation of his works. The purpose of this study is to analyse the features of reverbalisation of realia in translation. The research was conducted in the framework of the theory of interlanguage renomination and the linguistic theory of realia using the method of comparative analysis of the source and translation texts. The authors put forward and substantiate the hypothesis that in a literary text with a high degree of national color realia are functioning as a system thus forming the artistic realikon, an indivisible aesthetic complex, which is used to display the writer’s individual picture of the world. The realikon elements form a field structure with a core and a periphery. The core of the realikon is undergoing the greatest changes, since only a few Russian L-realia, as well as some French R-realia that name the key concepts of the novel, retain their place in it. The near periphery is formed by C-realia rendered by explication or accompanied by a translator’s metatext. The far periphery is formed by numerous R-realia, functional equivalents and hyperonyms, as well as C-realia, rendered by using French equivalents or via literal translation, which completely erases the national color of the source text. Thus, the study allows to identify similarities and differences in realikons as fragments of artistic pictures of the world reflected in source and translation texts, as well as to determine and justify quantitatively and qualitatively the dominant translation strategy used to render the national color.