Analysis of Literary Texts with Digital Methods (Based on Ch. Aitmatov's Work “Mother Earth” and its Translation)

This article investigates the application of digital methods to literary texts, focusing on a comparative analysis of Chingiz Aitmatov's work Samanchynyn zholu(Mother Earth) and its English translation. Recognizing the growing importance of digital humanities in advancing textual research, the aim of this article is to assess the translation's quality and explore the efficacy of Voyant Tools for analyzing texts in the Kyrgyz language, marking one of the first such attempts. Comparative analysis and Voyant Tools' functionalities, including word frequency calculation, collocation identification, and visualization (word clouds, graphs, concordances), the study processed both the 27,161-word Kyrgyz original and the 38,737-word English translation. Key findings reveal thematic alignment between the two texts; characters like Aliman and Tolgonai, and themes such as "Mother Earth," war, and daily life, consistently emerged as central. Despite linguistic structural differences, the translation effectively conveyed the core narrative and character prominence. While minor variations in lemmatization across languages were observed, Voyant Tools successfully provided quantitative and qualitative insights into textual characteristics and semantic preservation. This research demonstrates the robust potential of digital tools to complement traditional literary scholarship, offering a data-driven approach to understanding translation fidelity and enriching the study of Kyrgyz literature.