Aspect features of Russian and English verb in language and text (by example of M.A. Bulgakov's The Heart of a Dog and its translations)

The paper discusses the category of aspect, the principles of reflection of the type of action in process, as well as single-level and multilevel means of expressing aspectual semantics in languages of different types, namely, the Russian and English languages. Considering aspectual relations in the text gives more information about the category and shows ways to achieve equivalence in translation of Russian units with aspectual semantics into the English language. In Russian and other Slavic languages nuclear means of expressing aspectual relations is the category of aspect, while the other means of expressing aspect are not grammatical. The question about the nature of the category of aspect in the English language is still subject to debate, an indisputable fact is that in English aspectual meaning is expressed by tense forms. We identified the following methods of translation of Russian verbs characterized by a certain mode of action into English. 1. Free translation by verbal combinations with phase verbs: Он запел сквозь зубы / He began to sing under his breath; В ванной что-то запрыгало / Something began to jump in the bathroom, etc. This type of transformations is most representative for expressing the initiatory semantics of the Russian verb. 2. Translation by analytical combinations of words including analytical structures that express the type of action: Поговорил и начал обращаmься в первобытное состояние / He spoke for a while and then began to regress towards his original condition. 3. Translation by the verb with the same meaning as the Russian verb with a prefix, when the indication of the type of action is part of the lexical meaning of the English verb (including the phrasal ones), while the Russian verb is characterized by a particular affix to express a similar meaning: Пес глянул на него / The dog glanced at him; Они бок мой изрежут / They will cut up my side. Analysis of M. Bulgakov's The Heart of a Dog and its English translations demonstrates that the Russian text expresses aspectual semantics by means of the category of aspect and lexical and word-forming classes of Russian verbs, while the English text reproduces aspectual meanings by an extensive system of English tenses and analytical verb and non-verb constructions with aspectual meaning.

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