Equivalence and National Realities in Literary Translation: A Case Study of the Translations of the Novella “Eski Maktab”

This article offers a comparative and analytical overview of the Russian translations of “Maktabi Kuhna” (“Eski Maktab”) — a novella written by Sadriddin Ayni, one of the greatest representatives in Tajik and Uzbek literature. To be more specific, the paper focuses on three translations by O. Sukhareva, S. Borodin and G. Ptitsyn, examining them for language accuracy/particularity, style integrity/implemention of stylistic devices, lexico-semantic authenticity and preservation of national color. The paper helps elucidate not only the weaknesses inherent in the literal translation of texts, but also strategies for making cultural relevance manifest and deploying footnotes and other commentary to make this possible within a text, as well as the general problem of equivalence in translation. The results are meant to furnish both practical and theoretical know-how for future translations of Ayni’s literary corpus.