Translation strategies for interpreting lexemes introducing speech in Chinese translations of novels by F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy

This article is devoted to the study of translation methods of direct speech lexemes from Russian into Chinese on the material of F.M. Dostoevsky's “Crime and Punishment” and L.N. Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina”. The author relies on a previously conducted comparative study of the repertoires and frequency of lexemes introducing direct speech in the Russian original texts of these two novels, and describes the methods of translation, comparing the strategies of translators in different versions of translations of classic Russian novels. The most famous translated versions of F.M. Dostoevsky's and L.N. Tolstoy's novels in China are selected for analysis. This article analyzes the translations of the novel “Crime and Punishment”, translated by Ru Long (汝龙), the joint translation by Zhu Haiguan (朱海观) and Wang Wen (王汶), and the novel “Anna Karenina”, translated by Cao Ying (草婴), translated by Yu Dawei (于大卫). The study found that stylistic adaptation is often used in Russian-Chinese translation. It is noted that “说” and “道” are widely used in literary works - translators add these words, which meets the requirements of completeness and adequacy. It is noted that adverbs become a common means of conveying internal and external qualification of action in translations, which allows to convey the meaning of the text in accordance with the narrative norm of the Chinese language. Comparing the translations of “Crime and Punishment” and “Anna Karenina” into Chinese through the “mirror” of translation allows us to examine the manner of introducing direct speech in both writers and see that its difference creates more (when translating F.M. Dostoevsky's novel) or less (when translating L.N. Tolstoy's novel) difficulties in translating the speech frame and sometimes prompts translators to different solutions.