Re-discovering Potebnya: the scholar’s observations and the translator’s notes

The article deals with studying the heritage of the outstanding Ukrainian philologist Oleksandr Potebnya and specifics of translating his main linguophilosophical works into Ukrainian. The research was substantiated by the relevance of O. Potebnya’s ideas for the development of philology both in Ukraine and internationally, especially such its major branches as linguistics, literary studies and translation studies. The article pursues a double aim: (1) to outline a range of problems initiated by the scientist that are of a potential interest for the Ukrainian researchers today and thus to contribute to further popularization of O. Potebnya’s heritage in the academic circles; (2) to describe the strategy and difficulties of translating O. Potebnya’s works into Ukrainian. The implementation of this aim required the use of a number of different methods such as: analysis and synthesis (for determining relevant provisions of O. Potebnya’s theory and their extrapolation into the modern philological dimension), linguostylistic analysis (for determining specifics of the author’s individual style as a scientist), self-reflection (for determining the strategy of translation and factors that determined it), comparative analysis (for determining the difficulties of translation and ways of overcoming them). During all his academic career, O. Potebnya investigated the interrelations between human mind, language and speech. His most distinguished work in this domain is “Thought and language”, in which he not only elaborates on Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory of linguistic determinism, but also proposes his own concept of a word structure as a combination of a form, meaning and concept (that later on evolved into the theory of a word’s internal form). Among O. Potebnya’s prognostic ideas permeating his works the most outstanding are those relating to the language as a system and structure, the word as a sign and a means of reality’s conceptualization and categorization, ties between language, science and arts (multimodality). The strategy of translation was implemented with emphasis on the original and the author’s individual style, and its main difficulties were connected with archaic terminology, culture specific illustrative material and intertextual inclusions.