POETIC INSERTIONS IN CAO XUEQIN’S DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER AND THEIR RENDERING IN RUSSIAN TRANSLATION

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that the poetic inclusions in Cao Xueqin’s work Dream of the Red Chamber are not an optional embellishment of the narrative, but rather a structurally significant element of the artistic whole: they participate in the characterization of the characters, form the motif-symbolic layer of the text, perform a prognostic function, and organize the connection between the everyday, philosophical, and aesthetic planes of the novel. The objective of the study is to identify the main regularities of poetry translation in the Russian linguistic space, based on the material of Russian editions of the novel and works devoted to their analysis. This article defines the function of poetic fragments in the structure of the novel, describes the main difficulties of their translation into Russian, identifies the translation strategies employed in rendering poems, titles, and other poetic fragments, and reveals the role of subtext in compensating for semantic gaps. The translation of poetic fragments in the novel is considered as a special subsystem of literary translation, requiring a comprehensive consideration of semantics, structure, cultural markedness, and perceptual effect. The article defines the principles of applying the functional-semantic approach to the translation of poetic insertions in prose texts. The findings obtained can be used in courses on literary translation, courses on translation analytics, as well as in teaching Chinese literature to Russian-speaking audiences.