БИЛЬБО БЭГГИНС VS. БИЛЬБО ТОРБИНС: THE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOBBIT, OR THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Abstract

My capstone project is focused on the comparative analysis of Russian translations of proper nouns in Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by Rakhmanova (1976) and Matorina (1990). The research question is how the translator’s inclination towards domestication or foreignization approaches affects the use of creation and transformation in the translation of The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. My hypothesis is that Rakhmanova’s translation will be inclined to use a foreignization approach because of her willingness to create a more conservative Russian translation which will be more likely to receive approval from the Soviet Censorship. At the same time, I suppose that Matorina prefers to use a domestication approach because it is translated later and predominantly aimed to make the novel more understandable for Russian readers by adapting the proper names into Russian folklore. The primary source on which the argument is based is a sample of 114 proper nouns collected from Rakhmanova and Matorina’s translations. This research focuses on the specific categories of proper nouns: anthroponyms (names of people), toponyms (names of places) and objects. In this Capstone project, I use Davies’s (2003) classification system to categorize the translation techniques used for proper nouns in The Hobbit. The research makes a profound analysis of secondary sources to reveal the genre peculiarities in children’s literature. Furthermore, this project examines the historical background to explore the influence of historical background on Russian translators. This research project also analyses the previous translation studies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in other languages like Italian researched by Mambelli (2022) and Lithuanian analyzed by Jaleniauskiene and Čičelytė (2009), and Valeišaitė (2022). Although there are previous studies with similar topics, there is a lack of research on the translation of proper nouns in Russian. Therefore, this project will contribute to the field of translation studies within the Russian language. Overall, this research has found that most frequently both translators preserve the original version of names. For the translation of anthroponyms, transliteration is commonly used by both translators due to the absence of semantic roots. However, for the translation of toponyms and objects, Matorina is more inclined to the domestication approach and uses creative adaptations, while Rakhmanova prefers the foreignization approach and mostly preserves the original version. Thus, the hypothesis is accepted since Rakhmanova prefers to apply the foreignization approach while Matorina predominantly uses the domestication approach.