THE SPEECH VOLUME, SPEECH FLOW AND MEDIUM LENGTH OF THE CHARACTERS’ REMARKS IN THE ORIGINAL AND THE TRANSLATION VERSION OF A. CHEKHOV’S PLAY “THE CHERRY ORCHARD”

Abstract

The article presents the analysis of the dramatic text conducted with the help of the quantitative linguistics’ methods. Unlike other literary works, a dramatic text has a complex system, with dialogue structure serving as its main element. The study focuses on three quantitative parameters that serve as indicators for evaluating a dramatic text: the speech volume (the number of words), the speech flow (the number of remarks) and the medium length of characters’ remarks. The research is based on A. Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard” and its English-language translation version made by C. Garnett. The conducted analysis reveals that the characters’ speech contains a greater number of lexical units in the translation version compared to the original text. According to the authors, this phenomenon can be attributed to the difference in the structure of the Russian and English languages, as well as to differences in grammatical and syntactical structures in Russian and English, which necessitate the inclusion of additional words when translating a dramatic text from Russian into English. The authors conclude that the quantitative analysis of dramatic texts enables to discern specific linguistic and structural features, which should be taken into consideration during the process of translation.