Common nouns as an object of translation and commentary in the Chinese editions of Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter

The commentary of the translator is seen as a specific type of secondary text destined to serve as an inside look at multicultural communication, while also providing a source of unique recollections for the reader. The article covers the material of seven translated editions of the Chinese language publication of Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter carried out between 1956 and 2013. Analysis of the texts elucidates the specific units the publishers and translators selected for a linguistocultural commentary, which shed light upon the more personal commentaries of the translators in the given volumes. The works of Alexander Pushkin represent the most famous Russian translations in a multitude of languages; however, their unique meaning within the context of Russian culture has remained hidden from the modern reader for more than two centuries behind a web of seemingly untranslatable cultural particularities. For this very purpose, linguistic-cultural information in Pushkin's texts is recognized as necessary for translation and commentary to fully elucidate the meaning of the original in the language of the translation. Key cultural phrases, sometimes observed in but a single translation, are analyzed through their explanation and translation in Chinese versions of Pushkin's texts. The content of these commentaries allows for the comparison of all variations of the translation, evolving over the course of a century and changing with the increased cultural interaction. This comparison gives the chance to evaluate the quality of the translation in case of the absence of a commentary from the translator. All possible changes in semantics and style, including the dynamic aspect, are studied through the analysis of two groups of Russian dictionaries: those from the era of the original, and those from the era of the translation. Data from these dictionaries give information about the subtle changes in the nuances of the text that occurred in the lexical meaning or stylistic connotations of the text over the course of two centuries. The study of the materials from the National Corpus of the Russian Language finds moments that illustrate the processes influencing the analysis of linguistic units, and also gives important statistical material about the specific function of these key phrases within the text. The results of the research are interesting not only in their relation to the study of the translation and selection of equivalent lexical phrases to express unique cultural ideas in the translated text, but also in the study of the specificity of explanations given in the Russian dictionaries and their relation to the function of the Russian language in the 18th and 19 th centuries.

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