Post-war society in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”: the problem of representing ethno-cultural trauma in the original text, Russian and Armenian translations

The aim of this research is to identify, using Virginia Woolf’s novel “Mrs. Dalloway” and its Russian and Armenian translations, the specific characteristics of the representation of traumatic experiences related to ethno-cultural conflicts. The hypothesis of the study lies in the assumption of a witness figure (an instance of providing a testimony), necessarily present in such texts at the authorial level or at the level of a character’s consciousness. In the situation of literary translation as a cultural transfer, the function of “testimony” may be consciously realized by the translator to varying degrees, which gives rise to variants of “refraction” of the author’s intention. Based on an analysis of the text and contextual sources, it is concluded that the witnessing function as a reflection on ethno-cultural trauma in “Mrs. Dalloway” is realized by the authorial instance, while the heroine completely ignores this aspect. The studied translations of the novel – Russian and Armenian – offer different versions of translational refractions. The specificity of such refraction, as it is realized within the framework of the British-Russian-Armenian transfer of literary elements, is identified for the first time, which constitutes the scholarly novelty of this research. Concrete textual examples demonstrate the readiness of the target culture to perceive the source socio-cultural elements and/or to their translational modification. In accordance with the aim of the study, the analysis of the original and translations pays particular attention to extra-textual (contextual) factors: historical period, historical and cultural values, ethno-cultural traumas, the purpose of translation/non-translation, etc. As a result, it is shown that, synthesizing the objective reality of the interwar period through the paradigm of fiction, Woolf creates a matrix in the novel “Mrs. Dalloway” which, when transferred to other contexts, may possess a special, unplanned-by-the-author sensitivity. Comparing such potentially sensitive elements of the novel, as they are given in the original and translation, allows us to identify transformations caused by the historical-cultural, political, and psychological background of the target culture.