The Orthodox world of Chekhov’s short stories in German translations

Abstract

The article discusses the problems of scientific criticism of literary translation. The research material was translations of short stories. The purpose of the study is to determine the spiritual semantic dominants of the analyzed texts, including emotional, evaluative and pragmatic components, based on the analysis of the role of Orthodox concepts and realities in the structure of the content of the stories, and to find an algorithm for their translation interpretation, which can become a starting point for searching for relevant translation equivalents and for constructive and critical analysis of the finished literary translation. The chosen strategy is based on a categorically oriented model of analysis of the original text, namely, an appeal to the ways of transmitting the categories of the author, chronotope and text dynamics, the most important in the genre of the story. The author’s category, author’s intentions, and hidden dynamics make up the complex structure of the subtext. This phenomenon of Chekhov’s short stories is the main translation problem and requires an in-depth analysis. Specific language problems are associated with misinterpretation of individual situations and inadequate vocabulary selection.

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