F.M. Dostoevsky's The Gambler in F.J Whishaw's translation: preliminary notes

The first English translation of Dostoevsky's The Gambler was released by writer F.J Whishaw in 1987. Those days literary translation was on the stage of formation, Dostoevsky was regarded in Britain as a secondary figure among Russian writers, and his unconventional style was referred to the disadvantages. It is important to find out how these circumstances influenced Whishaw's work. We can get an insight of Whishaw's concept as a translator via comparative analysis of the first chapter of the original text and the translation. It is important to pay attention to the following points: reproduction of the symbolic meaning of the chronotope, metaphorical Russian lexical unites given in French transliteration, as well as the accuracy of translation of the two fragments - the story in the Roman embassy and the dialogue between Alexey Ivanovich and Polina. Comparison of the original text and the translation elicited a number of inaccuracies. The translator changed the name of the town from Roulettenbourg to Roulettenberg, interpreting the symbolic meaning of the novel space in his own way. Whishaw often translates French lexical units, though they play the key role in creating the moral of the characters. In the scenes describing the story in the Roman embassy and the dialogue of Alexey and Polina there is a number of lexical inaccuracies which cause distortion of the heroes' characters and their motives in translation. To sum up we can say that Whishaw's version is the translation (not the retelling or loose translation) with a number of semantic inaccuracies taking away or shifting the author's accents that distort the human nature of the heroes and the author's intention. Despite his special attitude to Dostoevsky Whishaw still was not able to avoid the impact of the British literary critics and writers and tried to make the style of the novel more suitable for the reader accustomed to Victorian literature.

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