THE HISTORY OF TRANSLATIONS OF THE NOVEL IN VERSE “EUGENE ONEGIN” BY A.S. PUSHKIN IN CHINA

Abstract

The article presents the history of the translation interpretation of “Eugene Onegin” in China. Chinese readers first learned about this work at the beginning of the twentieth century, and only in the 1940s did its full Chinese translation appear. Then the number of translations gradually increase, so far there are fifteen translations available. The article introduces information about the translators, tells about the objective difficulties they encountered in their work, and analyzes features of translations (accuracy of vocabulary reproduction, language style, the problem of reproducing Onegin stanza, etc.) based on the assessments dominating in Chinese criticism, it is concluded that eleven out of fifteen Chinese translations of “Eugene Onegin” can be considered complete, possessing certain artistic merits. As a result, the general trend of the history of the translation of “Eugene Onegin” has been clarified: a more faithful rendering of the meaning of the original, the maximum approximation to the style of Pushkin and the Onegin stanza.