Phraseological units in the play “The Seagull” by A. Chekhov and the ways of their translation into English

The aim of the study is to identify the main translation trends in the transfer from Russian to English of the phraseological units used by A. P. Chekhov in the play “The Seagull”. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time a comparative study of five translations of the play (published between 1912 and 2015) was conducted, which allows us to consider ways of transmitting the phrase under consideration and identify possible translation problems that remain unresolved. As a result of the study, it was found that the most frequent way of translating the phraseological units is the use of equivalent English phraseological units (26 examples) or phraseological analogues (26 examples). We noted that the descriptive translation technique was chosen in 19 cases, and D. Hare used this way of translation more often than other translators (7 times). Some cases were identified where the techniques of omission, literal translation and contextual substitution were employed.