Solo Vandanov's Historical Works in the Buryat Written Sources Parallel Corpus

Introduction. The introduction of digital technologies in the presentation of texts in the Old Mongolian script and the demand for machine translation actua­lize the creation of a parallel corpus of Buryat written sources in the Mongolian script. Within the framework of the Russian Science Foundation project “Parallel Corpus of Buryat Written Sources in the Mongolian Script: Towards Machine Translation”, a genre selection of sources, their transliteration and translation into Russian, meta-marking was carried out. The purpose of the article is to analyze and introduce into scientific circulation the written heritage of Solo Vandanov and to consider the problems of translation and meta-marking of the text using his works as an example. Materials and methods. The work is based on the developments of the authors of the diachronic corpus of the Buryat language, the National Corpus of the Buryat Language, with the help of which materials from the collections of the Center for Oriental Manuscripts and Xylographs were presented, in particular, the historical narrative of Solo Vandanov “Journey to Beijing”. Results. The article provides a source study characteristic of the creative heritage of Solo Vandanov and provides his biographical data. It is noted that the author’s essay “A Trip to Beijing” is a valuable source, written in the genre of walking. In its descriptive style and organization of the text, it differs from the compiled history of Buddhism in India, Tibet and Mongolia. The analysis of Solo Vandanov’s travel notes made it possible to identify the features of sentence construction, the presence of complex-compound constructions. Conclusions. The works of Solo Vandanov convey the regional features of the written culture of the Buryats, and his travel notes are an original monument of the genre of travels in the old written Mongolian language. It is noted that the compilation nature of the presentation influenced the organization of the text and the construction of sentences. The materials of Solo Vandanov are of great scientific significance for characterizing the written heritage of the Buryats, stylistic and linguistic features.