Перевод избранных частей романа «Трудно быть богом» на английский, немецкий и чешский языки
Problems in Translations of Selected Passages of Strugatsky Brothers’ Novel “Hard To Be A God” into English, German and Czech

Summary/Abstract: The author of the present article occupies himself with translations of Hard To Be A God novel, one of the most famous works of Strugatsky brothers, into English, German and Czech. He briefly describes the novel itself and afterwards depicts specific style and means of expressions that make the translation of this book (as well as other Strugatsky brothers’ books) difficult and troublesome. Next, the profiles of all three translators are being examined – their short biographies are presented and their careers are briefly described. The main part of this article deals with problematical passages; many examples are given, of where the trans¬lations are inaccurate and far from original. The author is brought to the conclusion (which is being supported with many elements of the trans¬lation itself) that the English translator, Wendayne Ackerman, simply couldn’t translate the book from Russian original, since she was mainly a Germanist and didn’t know Russian. It is therefore more than likely that it was not the Russian original, but the German translation (created a bit earlier) that served as source text for the English translation (which has led to many additional discrepancies and mistakes). Moreover, the author finds all examined translations to be far from perfect (though each of them has a different level of quality), changing the overall impression and making the result much shallower and unimaginative than the original text.

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