Modern American translation of Anton Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” as the example of text transcoding

Aim is to examine transcoding as a type of linguistic mediation and its potential application in text transmission, particularly using the example of the translation of Anton Chekhov's play “The Seagull”; to determine the presence or absence of contradictions to the author's original intention in one of the latest versions of the play's translation into English, performed in 2017 (published in 2019) in the United States based on commissioned by director Janice L. Blixt, based on an analysis of individual examples of translational transcoding in an English-language text.

Methodology. The following research methods were used: methods of theoretical analysis (to systematize factual material and deduce certain patterns in the description process); descriptive method (used to describe the studied lexical units in terms of their functioning in the text of the work); comparative method (used when comparing the original work and its translation into English).

Results. As a result of the research, the author concludes that in order to achieve the translator's goal of creating a play understandable to the modern American public, the techniques of transcoding the text, adding and omitting were used. The main contradictions with the Chekhov text are revealed in the characterization of the characters given by the translator, which has little in common with the original work and sometimes contradicts it. In several cases, translation decisions led to the loss of the implicit component of the author's characterization of the characters of the work, created at the level of stylistic coloring of lexical units, which led to a rather free interpretation of the image itself. Nevertheless, the solutions used by the translator did not lead to a distortion of the author's ideological and semantic content of the work, which has not lost its deep philosophical connotation in this version.

Research implications lies in the relevance of the topic being developed and the possibility of using its conclusions in the course of other research in this field. The materials of the work can be used in universities of the humanities in theoretical developments and lecture courses on the theory and practice of translation, intercultural communication, linguoculturology.

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