A NEW METHOD OF COMPARING CONCEPTUAL SPHERES (APPLIED TO SENSE AND SENSIBILITY BY JANE AUSTEN AND ITS TRANSLATIONS)

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Abstract. The purpose of the research is to identify the degree of correspondence between the conceptual spheres in the novel Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen (Austen J., 2014b) and its translations by revealing how key concepts are interpreted in them. The research examines four French translations by I. de Montolieu (1815) (Austen J., 2016b), J. Castier (1948) (Austen J., 2016a), J. Privat (1948) (Austen J., 2012) and P. Goubert (2000) (Austen J., 2009), as well as three Russian translations by I.G. Gurova (1988) (Austen J., 1999), A.Y. Frolova (2013) (Austen J., 2013) and A.P. Dremichev (2014) (Austen J., 2014a). A new method of comparing conceptual spheres (in terms of their structural and proportional content) has been suggested and tested on representative text samples. The method is based on the analysis of lexico-stylistic means identified in the novel and in its translations: tropes, stylistically marked vocabulary, and phraseological units. The total number of considered examples is 7,345 units. The original conceptual sphere of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen has been identified as six key concepts considered as three binary oppositions: 1) SENSE vs SENSIBILITY (the main opposition in the novel); 2)MERITS vs DEMERITS (moral and aesthetic discourse); 3) WEALTH vs POVERTY (socio-economic discourse). Taking into account the most widely represented and therefore the most reliable categories of lexico-stylistic means, in the conceptual spheres of the novel and six of its seven translations the following proportions have been revealed: SENSIBILITY (50 % and over), SENSE, MERITS and DEMERITS (10-15 %), WEALTH (less than 10 %), POVERTY (less than 5 %). The concept of WEALTH takes twice the volume of the concept of POVERTY. However, a slight difference has been discovered in the translation by A.P. Dremichev (2014) where the percentage of WEALTH and POVERTY is modified due to a slight increase in the volume of the latter. The research results have led to the following conclusion. The interpretations of concepts in Sense and Sensibility and its translations have some semantic and stylistic variations. However, the proportions of the concepts in the translations generally correspond to those in the original novel, in spite of extensive use of additions in the translations by I. de Montolieu and A.P. Dremichev.

Keywords: retranslation, conceptual sphere, literature.

Tatyana V. Bobyleva

Novosibirsk State University Novosibirsk, Russia e-mail: bobylevatv@gmail.com ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0369-1631

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