Cultural information translatability and strategies of literary translation

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problems of literary translation transmission of cultural information and memory of a “strong” text, which is the repository and effective generator of aesthetic senses. Within the framework of the “cultural” trend in translation studies the cultural information and memory are regular translation objects and units. The history of literary translation demonstrates that a “strong” original text constantly creates numerous foreign language and other-systematic (intersemiotic) sec- ondary texts, forming a large center of translation attraction. From the standpoint of linguacultural area “strong” texts are located in textual and cultural grid nodes, providing stability and retentive property of cultures, as well as their regular participation in inter-cultural interaction and interchange. Relatively recently, the paradigm of linguacultural adaptation strategies of literary texts, formed with the strategies of foregnization and domestication, was expanded with the strategy of estrangement.The concept of estrangement was first identified and described as a special artistic technique that al- lows to transform the perception of the ordinary phenomenon in the strange one, to concentrate the reader’s attention on the phenomenon nominated in the text without its direct description. Being first formulated in the area of Russian formalism school, the technique of estrangement was mainly de- scribed on the material of the “strong” texts of Russian literature and culture. Later estrangement was considered in the theory of art not only as an artistic technique, but also as the universal law of art. The moat evident result of the law use and the widespread application of the technique of estrangement is the novel by M. A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”. The cultural information and memory are explicated in the original text by different kinds of culturonyms, describing the action of the heroes in biblical, Moscow and infernal time. This study presents the analysis of the cases of culturonyms’ transfer from the Bulgakov’s text into the English translations by using the strategy of estrangement. The application of the strategy of estrangement allows to recreate the original “strangeness” of the mystical novel in translations, which affects the perception of readers and provides a high degree of interpretiveness of the literary text information.