The Potential of Literary Translation in Intercultural Communication: Ota Pavel’s Short Stories for the Russian Reader

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reveal the specifics of the translation of cross-cultural texts by the Czech writer Ota Pavel. The main research methods are a description of potential difficulties and possible solutions, a comparative analysis of the translation and the original, contextual analysis, the use of analog texts to indicate the genre nature of the translated text. The main conclusions of the article are as follows: to convey the style of Ota Pavel, the translator must recreate the model of the world presented in the original text, which includes the specific features of Czech and Jewish cultures, by transmitting such characteristics of the text as slow narration, an abundance of retreats, repetitions, details, comparisons, specific Jewish humor using such translation tools as historical and cultural translation comments and compulsory translation transformations. The latter include: lexical transformations (translational transcription, tracing, lexical-semantic substitutions); lexical and grammatical transformations (explication, transformation); grammatical transformations (syntactic assimilation, division of sentences, combining sentences, grammatical replacements).