Articles

The article reviews Russian translations of the classical Chinese collection of stories Liaozhai Zhiyi, focusing on how the aesthetic content of the original is conveyed through translation aesthetics, particularly through the distinction between formal and non-formal systems. The study identifies the difficulties involved in interpreting the linguistic elements that contribute to the aesthetic effect of the source text and examines strategies for reproducing its aesthetic expressiveness in translation. The analysis demonstrates that translators such as V.M. Alekseev and A.G. Storozhuk successfully recreate the rhythmic and stylistic features of the original and employ techniques such as imagistic reconstruction, the inclusion of descriptive details, and cultural commentary to reproduce its literary imagery and atmosphere. The study is innovative in applying the formal/non-formal distinction to the translation of a text viewed as an aesthetic object and in providing a systematic comparative analysis of the strategies employed and the results achieved by different translators. The findings offer new insights into the application of aesthetic translation theory to the translation of classical texts.

The article presents a comparative analysis of the opening passage of Confucius's Analects and its translations by James Legge, P.S. Popov, and L.S. Perelomov. The enduring relevance of this text is undeniable: each return to it not only reiterates ancient wisdom but also opens up opportunities for discovering new meanings. The aim of the study is to identify the historical preconditions that influenced the emergence of divergent interpretations of the key concepts 學 xue ("study"), 習 xi ("practice/repetition"), and 說 yue ("joy"), which form the thematic core of the passage. Within the framework of translation understood as an "interpretive systemic activity," the identified differences are interpreted not as authorial idiosyncrasies but as the result of purposeful reinterpretation. Under specific socio-historical conditions, such reinterpretation may acquire the character of a political or cultural stratagem. The study compares the authors' own word-for-word translation of the opening phrases of the passage with the translations by James Legge, P.S. Popov, and L.S. Perelomov. Special attention is paid to the lexemes "philosopher" and "teacher," which are used to recreate the image of Confucius in Russian-language translations. The analysis suggests that the main source of divergent interpretations of the xue–xi–yue triad lies not so much in linguistic complexity as in the conscious intention to adapt the translation of the ancient text to the pressing concerns of the contemporary era.

This article examines the challenges of developing textbooks for interpreting in the Russian–Chinese language pair in the context of the digitalization of education. It analyzes the impact of digitalization on content, teaching methods, and instructional formats and discusses the current need to integrate digital technologies into educational materials in this field. The article notes that in China, textbooks for two-way Russian–Chinese interpreting are still developed primarily using traditional methods, without the active integration of digital technologies into the processes of material selection, exercise design, and skill development. It also analyzes specific approaches to selecting instructional and training materials, designing exercises, and developing interpreting skills through the use of modern digital technologies. The article concludes that the proposed innovative model contributes to enriching the methodological framework, updating approaches to textbook development, and improving the quality of interpreter training in the context of the digital transformation of education. The textbook development process follows several key principles: scientific rigor, progression from simple to complex, material authenticity, and a focus on developing practical skills. The methods employed include text complexity analysis, audiovisual editing, speech recognition, and the use of a smart pen.

The article examines the interlingual adaptation of corpora for named entity extraction on the basis of a German-Slovak military-political corpus. The object of the study is named entities in a translated corpus; the subject is the asymmetry that arises when German named entities are translated into Slovak and their annotation is projected or reconstructed. The purpose of the article is to determine how translation transformations affect the preservation of entity boundaries, classes, nominative status, and discursive function. The research combines translation analysis, comparative analysis of source and target nominations, class-specific examination of PER, LOC, ORG, UNIT, and WEAPON entities, and an assessment of annotation error risk. The study shows that translational equivalence and annotational equivalence do not necessarily coincide. A target-language form may preserve the same referent and remain acceptable in the target language while changing its surface form, entity span, grammatical structure, or status as an annotation object. The most significant problems include Slovak morphological adaptation of personal names and toponyms, the expansion of compact German compounds, functional translation of institutional names, partial machine translation of proper names, and the metonymic use of place names as geopolitical actors. The findings demonstrate that different transformations require different reannotation procedures: automatic label projection is possible only for stable forms, while expanded, functionally translated, or semantically reinterpreted entities require manual philological verification. The article concludes that a translated corpus intended for named entity extraction must be evaluated not only in terms of linguistic acceptability but also in terms of referential accuracy, boundary precision, class stability, nominative integrity, morphological variability, and discursive function. Philological verification is therefore an essential stage in preparing translated data for training and evaluating named entity extraction models.

In the translation of Lu Yao’s novel Life from Chinese into Russian, a cultural filtration strategy was applied. Textual analysis reveals that cultural filtration is primarily implemented through three main methods: softening ideological connotations, omitting descriptions of secondary elements, and integrating dialogue into the narrative. Guided by the principles of narrative coherence, thematic clarity, and plot conciseness, the translator achieves the cross-linguistic transfer of the novel’s core content while preserving its ideological and artistic value as well as its local flavor. Building on these findings, the article develops a mechanism of multi-level cultural filtration in literary translation, which facilitates contact with, perception of, and acceptance of Chinese culture in the Russian-speaking world.

This article analyzes the most effective translation strategies and techniques of adaptive translation for conveying the meaning of texts involving complex linguistic games employed by author-journalists. The source material consists of articles published in the Culture section of The Observer in 2025, which provide a basis for studying conceptual literary and journalistic texts. The purpose of the study is to identify the principles for determining the most effective translation strategies for rendering the linguistic games employed by journalists of the British newspaper The Observer, including V. Ayd, K. Weiner, A. Gentle, and S. Jenkins, within the framework of adaptive translation. The central object of the study, which demonstrates the advantages of adaptability, is translation information retransmitted within the sociocultural system of the United Kingdom. The research methodology is based on the principles of adaptive and comprehensive translation, which are applicable both to the newspaper's main sections and to specialized sections aimed at specific audiences and focused on particular types of information. In selecting translation strategies, the authors take into account the characteristics of typical calques, borrowings, and the stylistic features of journalists' language, giving priority to functionalism and the skopos of translation. This approach is particularly suited to the semantic and stylistic variability of publications from 2025. The study identifies linguistic games in examples of literary and journalistic discourse, determines the translation strategies required to render them, and clarifies the principles for working with the contemporary British press. The authors conclude that further methodological work is needed in the areas of post-editing, text deconstruction, and text generalization based on linguistic games involving elements of calquing and borrowing across different authors and discourses.

The article discusses the problem of translating avant-garde poetry, which is often regarded as a model of the "untranslatable" due to its deliberate violation of linguistic norms, intertextual density, and experimental form. The article focuses on the challenges of translating poetic texts in general and avant-garde poetry in particular, addressing the so-called theory of untranslatability. The article presents a translation analysis of a poetic compilation assembled by Mary de Rachewiltz from fragments of Ezra Pound's The Cantos. M. Vzorov analyzes his own translation of this text into Russian, completed in 2024–2025. The focus is on the difficulties of conveying key features of Pound's poetics (laconism, intertextuality, sound instrumentation, polyphony of registers) and the inevitable losses and compensations that occur when transferring a text into a different linguistic environment. The authors approach the discussed challenges from the functional and communicative paradigm of translation studies, which prioritizes adequacy, the impression produced on the target reader, and the intended communicative effect. Through a detailed analysis of specific translation solutions — ranging from the rendering of aphoristic statements and Chinese geographical names to classical allusions and imagist imagery — the study demonstrates that what is conventionally considered "untranslatable" often prompts the target text to "mutate" and find new forms of expression in the target language. The final part of the article raises the question of the need to turn to the traditions of the Russian poetic avant-garde as a potential source of translation strategies, while warning against the mechanical borrowing of techniques due to the deep historical and cultural differences between the Russian and Anglo-American avant-gardes. The authors conclude that a successful translation of avant-garde poetry requires not so much knowledge of foreign languages as a heightened sensitivity to the target language — to its archaic layers, its rare vocabulary, and its capacity to sound either as a prayer or as a dry telegram, depending on the task set by the original.

The article aims to localize and conceptualize creativity within the structure of translation competence models. The relevance of the study is driven by a contradiction between the demands of the modern market in the generative AI era, reshaping the future of the translation profession, and the poor representation of the creative component both in educational standards and in training methodologies. In an attempt to identify the translation competence elements that should be purposefully enhanced to develop translators' creativity, the author analyzes the most relevant translation competence models, from the static, component models developed by W. Wilss, V.N. Komissarov, and A. Neubert, and A. Pym's minimalist approach, to process-oriented, empirically grounded models developed by the PACTE Group, F. Alves and J. Gonçalves, and S. Göpferich. The paper concludes that the key conditions required for the actualization of translation creativity include, but are not limited to, three factors: (1) an acquired and internalized system of basic subcompetences, (2) freed-up cognitive resources that can be redirected to self-regulation, and (3) highly developed metacognitive skills. The results justify the critical need to shift emphasis in modern translation didactics toward the deliberate development of skills required for the conscious management of a translator's mental resources.

Object: this study presents a comparative analysis of the quality of machine translation (MT) produced by three leading systems (Google Translate, Yandex Translate, DeepL) across three specialized domains (medicine, law, and news articles). The analysis employs an original multi-agent approach based on the YandexGPT large language model.

Methods: the research material comprises 60 English-language texts (20 per domain), each translated by the three MT engines, resulting in a total of 180 translations for evaluation. A system of six virtual expert agents powered by YandexGPT was developed for assessment: a linguist, a semanticist, a terminologist, a pragmatist, a cultural adaptor, and a domain-specific expert (medical/legal/media discourse). Each agent evaluated translations on a 10-point scale. An agent-moderator then synthesized these individual assessments to produce a final score. Statistical analysis included ANOVA, Student's t-test, and Pearson/Spearman correlation analysis.

Findings: DeepL achieved the highest overall score (8.57±0.69), demonstrating particular strength in the legal domain (8.47). Google Translate unexpectedly excelled in the medical domain (8.80) and also led in media texts (8.59). Yandex Translate ranked third across all domains, exhibiting the highest score variability (7.91±1.06) and critical errors in legal translations (minimum score of 5.0). Statistically significant differences were found between the MT engines (p < 0.05). Correlation analysis of agent scores revealed high consistency between the linguist and semanticist (r = 0.82).

Conclusions: the proposed multi-agent approach provides explainable, multi-aspect evaluations. DeepL emerges as a versatile leader, particularly for legal translation; Google is preferable for medical and media texts; Yandex requires further development for specialized domains. These findings can inform post-editing strategies and guide the selection of MT systems for professional tasks.

Due to the long historical development of Chinese language and culture, culture-specific lexical items have undergone processes of historical consolidation, geographical influence, social formation, and religious shaping, gradually becoming distinctive cultural symbols that carry rich connotations and play a significant role in intercultural communication. Culture-specific items can be conditionally divided into five categories: ecological, material, social, religious, and linguistic. They are widely used in literary texts and pose challenges for translation.

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze strategies for rendering Chinese culture-specific vocabulary in literary texts in intercultural communication contexts, as well as to evaluate their effectiveness based on Russian translations of Mo Yan's works. The following methods are employed: classificatory analysis, comparative-contrastive analysis, translation strategy analysis, and theoretical analysis.

Results. The analysis revealed that the most effective approach to rendering culture-specific vocabulary is a combination of strategies, including literal translation, literal translation with annotations, paraphrasing, transcription, and neologism formation. The findings confirm the importance of flexibly combining foreignization and domestication strategies.

Conclusion. Culture-specific vocabulary in literary texts is fundamentally translatable. The success of translation depends on the adaptive selection of strategies, taking into account the type of cultural reference, context, and target audience reception. Translation thus serves as an effective tool for intercultural dialogue, revealing unique cultural meanings.