RENDERING THE ORTHODOX-MARKED FOLK SPEECH IN GERMAN TRANSLATIONS OF F. DOSTOYEVSKY'S NOVEL THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

The article represents a part of a comprehensive investigation of German translations of F. Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" on the basis of a cognitive-stylistic approach. One of the key elements of the novel's semantic structure, which accounts for the zone of intersection of the national worldview and the author's worldview, is the Orthodox worldview. One of its principal elements is the concept "love", which finds a multifaceted realization in the direct speech of characters in Chapter "Women of Faith". The concept is verbalized through such specific means bearing a national colouring as diminutive suffixes and frequent use of address forms. They both reveal the peculiar perception of "the other" in the mentality of the Orthodox believers, their constant need to have a responsive and empathizing heart nearby. Address forms are also often used with the diminutive suffixes, or otherwise signify the expression of love to the other. Statistical estimates have revealed different approaches of the translators to rendering the concept "love" in the direct speech of the characters. The greatest percent of omissions (10 out of 26 diminutive forms) is found in Hermann Röhl's translation (1924), whereas the translation by Hans Ruoff and Richard Hoffmann (1958) demonstrates the closest preservation of the abovementioned original stylistic means: diminutive suffixes are omitted in 3 cases only. Three translations are notable for untypical preservation of diminutive suffixes in the word "minutočka", literally, "a little minute". The author's neologism "a three-year-old baby" ("trechletoček"), also used in a diminutive form, has proven untranslatable. All translations show a relatively high degree of keeping the original functional role of address forms in the given chapter. A frequent way of compensating the means of rendering loving attitude is the use of the pronoun "mein" ("my"), which is particularly characteristic of Swetlana Geier's translation (2003). Ruoff and Hoffmann apparently aimed at bringing the Russian folk's speech patterns closer to the German usage by including the pronoun "du" ("you") in many cases where it is absent in the original. In the earliest translation by E.K. Rahsin (1906) the address form to starets Zossima "batjuška", which s literally translated as "Little Father" ("Väterchen"), is always substituted by a simple "Father" ("Vater"). Perhaps the translator wanted to avoid a possible derogation of Zossima. Generally, most address forms, including those particularly common in Russian colloquial speech, find adequate forms of substitution in German translations and are not bound to give rise to any misunderstanding. The analysis has demonstrated theviability of the cognitive-stylistic approach to investigating the translations and revealed the special forms of clash between the Russian and the German cultures at a deeper semantic level. The translations dynamics points out the trend towards a more comprehensive and precise reproduction of the Orthodox component of the novel's semantic structure.

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