Features of Literary Translation

Let's look at important concepts that will help you understand what exactly is behind high-quality translation.

First of all, the priorities in literary translation are distributed as follows:

♦  The author is the main source of meaning and style. The translator respects and carefully transmits the writer's voice, does not "reinvent the wheel", but uses proven language transmission tools.

♦  The language of translation. The richness and expressiveness of Russian speech is extremely important. It is recommended to focus on basic literary Russian, close to the styles of Chekhov and Dovlatov, avoiding far-fetched stylistic cliches and clerical language.

♦  A translator trusts his gut and taste, especially in situations where a bold experiment with form or words is required to convey unusual phrases or images.

♦  The reader is professional and attentive, he perceives the translation not just as a text, but as a literary work, and it is the reader who evaluates the quality of the translation.

Useful tips for every translator:

•  Work with whole phrases. It is especially important to take care of the beginning of the text, the ending and the climax, because they attract the reader's attention.

•  Avoid traces of foreign syntactic constructions. The translation should sound natural, without unnecessary conjunctions and cumbersome phrases. It is often better to use conjunctionless constructions and actively work with punctuation to make the text more dynamic and concise.

•  Fighting "linguistic garbage". Paperwork, repetitive words and unnecessarily complex constructions kill the vividness of the text. They need to be disposed of without losing their meaning.

•  Style and author's manner. Each writer is unique, and the translator's task is to maintain this uniqueness by experimenting with form, vocabulary and rhythm, while not forgetting about genre specifics.

•  Pay attention to the homogeneous members of the sentence and their connection. The rhythm and harmony of the text are very important for perception, and a conscious understanding of the rules and observations will be useful here.

Try to immerse yourself in the subtleties of literary translation and master the methods that will help maintain and enhance the beauty of the author's word.