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Concepts “Праздник” and “TO”: Linguocultural and Pretranslational Aspects
Veronica A. Razumovskaya and Karine A. Kardash*
Siberian Federal University 79 Svobodny, Krasnoyarsk, 660041 Russia 1
Received 4.07.2011, received in revised form 11.07.2011, accepted 18.07.2011
This article is devoted to the study of the concept “holiday” in two typologically, genealogically and culturally different languages: Russian and Chinese. Intercultural communication includes various aspects of concepts functioning in cultural, linguistic and translation areas. The study of the Russian and Chinese concepts “праздник” and “^B” reveals to define the invariant and differential cognitive and semantic components within two different languages and cultures and their embodiments in language. The frames and slots method and descriptive method are used in the analysis. The textual material is taken from Russian and Chinese poetry.
Keywords: concept, Russian, Chinese, intercultural communication, interlanguage translation, frames, slots, cognitive components.
Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling selfconscious and, perhaps, foolish. Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.
Francis C. Farley
successfully combine logic and psychological as well as linguistic characteristics. The search resulted in the appearance of nominative units whose significance is not equivalent, but which nonetheless meet the aspiration “to reflect in concepts” the imperceptible “spirit of the people” - ethnic specificity of presenting language knowledge. In the 1990s in Russian linguistic scholarship
* Corresponding author E-mail address: veronica_raz@hotmail.com
1 © Siberian Federal University. All rights reserved
Introduction:
In Search of a Concept
The necessity of creating a new scientific category to designate of the content part of a language sign and capable of overcoming some functional limitation of traditional notions of meaning and sense, demanded an intensive search in the last decades of the 20-th century. It was important to find a category which would
there appeared such terminological units as “concept” (Arutyunova, 1993; Likhachev, 1983; Stepanov, 1997), “linguocultureme” (Vorobyov, 1997), “mythologeme” (Lahteenmaki, 1999), “logoepisteme” (Vereshchagin, Kostomarov, 1999), “preliterate art universals” (Mirimanov, 2001), “totem” (Neretina, Ogurtsov, 2006). By now it has become obvious that the term “concept” is the most viable and, as a consequence, most regularly used. The frequency of occurrence of this terminological unit considerably outstripped all other proterminological new formations (Vorkachev, 2003).
The term “concept” is widely used by scholars working in the fields of cognitive linguistics and linguaculture (A. Wierzbicka, R. Langacker, K. Goddard, Yu.S. Stepanov, R.M. Frumkina, I.A. Melchuk, D.S. Likhachev, V.I. Karasik, S.G. Vorkachev, V.A. Maslova, etc.). However, up until now there has been no uniform standard and unequivocal understanding of the given term. Along with the term “cognitive sciences” (Kubryakova, 1994), which designate the disciplines studying “thought language”, the term “concept” covers subject areas of several adjacent fields of research. Most important among them, are cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics, dealing with the problems of thinking and knowledge, and information processing and storage (Kubryakova, 1996).
In Russian linguistics as R.M. Frumkina notices the term “concept” was borrowed from the English-language scientific literature in the mid-seventies (Frumkina, 1992). The English terminological unit “concept” was traditionally translated into Russian as “conception (понятие)”. This tradition to some extent has continued up to the present time as many researchers do not differentiate between the terms “concept” and “conception” and use them as terminological doublets. However, Yu.S. Stepanov considers that it is necessary to differentiate between the terms
specified above; he assigns the term “conception” to logic and philosophy, and “concept” - to the mathematical logic, and recently to culture studies (Stepanov, 2001). Yu.S. Stepanov treats the term “concept” as the basic cell of culture in the mental world of a person. The concept on the one hand introduces the content of the concept, and on the other hand everything that makes it a fact of culture - etymology, short history of the given concept, modern associations, assessments, experiences (Stepanov, 2004). A. Wierzbicka considers “concept” an object from the world of the “Ideal”, having a name and reflecting certain culturally-induced ideas of a person about the world “Real” (Wierzbicka, 1985). N.D. Arutyunova, however, sees the linguistic sign as the basis for the allocation of the concept. According to N.D. Arutyunova’s theory concepts are “concepts of vital philosophy”, “ordinary analogs of world outlook terms” fixed in the lexicon of natural languages providing foe the stability and continuity of the spiritual culture of the ethnos (Arutyunova, 1993; Arutyunova, 1999).
Any concept is an element of the particular conceptual system of consciousness of a speaker and provides information about a real or possible state of affairs in the world. As such, it is connected with all multitudes of other, real or possible, “systems of opinions”, reflecting different views of the world. It is possible to assume hypothetically that some kind of “conceptual memory” contributes to the concept content as an optional component - a functional analog of the “cultural memory of a word” (Yakovleva, 1998: 45). It follows from the definitions above that the term “concept” is interpreted by all researchers as a regular phenomenon of cognitive linguistics. The various ways of understanding the concept demonstrate that the concept content is assigned different interpretation and different components: fact of
the culture, conceptual memory, and an element of logic and culture studies.
The interpretations of “concept” presented above, though varied. do not exhaust the existing theoretical and methodological treatments of this pressing question. However, on the basis of the cited views it is possible to draw the conclusion that researchers regularly link the term “concept” not only to the mental world, but also to the world of culture. Concept is “a fact of culture”, “cultural memory of a word”, “the object reflecting culturally-induced ideas of a person about the world”. In our work we adhere to Yu.S. Stepanov’s definition: concept is “the quintessence of culture in consciousness of a person; something in the form of which culture penetrates the mental world of a person by means of which an average person, not a creator of cultural values penetrates culture himself or herself, and in certain cases influences it” (Stepanov, 2004: 43). Concept and the concept content are traditionally analyzed taking into account the way every person of a certain culture perceives and interprets generally accepted realities which are characteristic of the various linguacultures to which the person belongs. By comparing peculiarities in traditions, revealing obvious distinctions, as well as finding the points of contact between two various cultures, it is possible to consider their manifestations in the language “through the culture of consciousness of a person”. The set of concepts which exists in each language and culture is characterized by a certain amount of uniqueness that makes each culture unique. However, the fact that there are concepts that are presented in practically all cultures is evidence of a certain mental universality. One such concept, which claims to have universal status, is concept the “holiday”. The concept “holiday” is a regular concept in the majority of cultures as it reflects the organization of human life within the long period of the humanity existence.
Holiday as the Universal and Complex Research Object
The task of the present research is to define the content of the concepts “праздник” and “^
0” in the Russian and Chinese linguacultures. The description of what is invariant and differential in the content of the specified concepts will allow for the definition of some similarities and distinctions existing between typologically and genetically unrelated languages and cultures (Sokolovsky, 2010). The results obtained can be used in culturological, linguistic and translational researches. It is necessary to pay special attention to the insufficiently wide and insufficiently effective application of the idea of concepts in translation and interpretation studies both at a stage of the pretranslational analysis of the original text, and when studying translational strategy and assessment of the quality of the translated text. However, some interesting works have already appeared in this area (Sokolovsky, 2009). The right understanding of the concept content helps the translator in the decoding of the original text information and in the recoding this information in the target text.
In his analysis of humorous medieval culture, M.M. Bakhtin formulated the fundamental theses of the theory of holday, which has remained important for scholars up until this day (Bakhtin, 1990). The holiday became a subject of special theoretical analysis in the works of such foreign researchers as H. Cox, R. Cailois, R. Genon, G. - G. Gadamer, as well as in works of Russian authors - R.M. Frumkina, M.M. Bakhtin, A. Novikova, S.G. Vorkachev, etc. Their research reflects various aspects of the onceptualization of the holiday. The problem of holiday and culture interrelation was studied by M.M. Bakhtin, A.Ja. Gurevich, V.V. Ivanov; holiday and game by - J. Hejzinga; holiday and humorous culture by M.M. Bakhtin, D.S. Likhachev, Yu.M. Lotman, A.M. Panchenko, VJa. Propp, B.A. Uspensky.
The holiday as social phenomenon has been studied in detail in the works of J.P. Belousova, K. Zhigulsky, A.L. and A.S. Grinshteins, A.A. Rudnev, D. M. Ugrinovich, A.I. Mazaev,
D.M. Genkin, L.S. Lapteva, E.V. Rudensky, V.G. Shabalin, A.M. Konechniy, A.G. Levinson, A.F. Nekrylova, O.V. Nemiro. A.K. Bajburin, T.J. Bernshtam, M.M. Gromyko, V.I. Chicherov, A.S. Abramjan, V.Ya. Propp, S. Tokarev, V.N. Toporov, V.P. Isaenko, B.R. Egorov, Yu.M. Lotman, V.S. Turchin. The works by N.A. Hrenova are devoted to ethnographic and starting aspects of a holiday. T.V. Shmeleva and T.V. Tarasenko study holiday in relation to the etiquette-speech genre “congratulation”.
The study of culture assumes, first of all, research and description of sociocultural phenomena. Such phenomena could be determined as an anthropological position, the vital world, an institutionalization of a picture of the world, the world as myth and ritual. The works of L. Ionin, B. Malinovsky, K. Levi-Stross, M. Weber, U. Beck, J. Mead, A. Schütz, E. Husserl,
F. Tenbrook, J. Habermas, S. Huntington were devoted to social construction. These researchers believe that cultural peculiarities substantially depend on ritual and celebratory experience of the given society.
In philosophical-humanitarian scholarship of the last decades various semantic aspects of a holiday have been developed in the theoretical and empirical researches of such scholars as M.M. Bakhtin, L.S. Vygotsky, E. Hiddens,
I.S. Konn, A.N. Leontiev, Yu.M. Lotman, M.K. Mamardashvili, V. A. Remizov, J. Habermas, and others.
Being one of the most stable components of culture, a holiday is extremely sensitive to changes occurring in a society that result in a shift of the cultural values of a society and their forms of representation. According to A. Novikov, the holiday allows “to scan the
condition of a society or, anyway, a cultural mode” (Novikov, 2000). It should be added that the holiday not only “scans”, but also preserves cultural and language traditions of a specific society, allowing us to observe the development or disappearance of some signs of traditions due to these or other sociocultural changes. The preservation of cultural and language traditions in a society is realized on the basis of regular repeatition of a holiday. It is known that holidays are the most ancient traditions considered to be one of the major manifestations of traditional culture of a given people formed over centuries or and even millennia. In Russia holidays were connected with rituals, labor activity, attitude, pagan rites and sacrifices. Holidays in China, especially national and religious, are connected with very ancient traditions, with Chinese beliefs. Therefore it is possible to speak about the special importance of holidays and celebrating holidays in the lives of Russian and Chinese people. Studying the cultural specificity of a holiday in Russia and in China allows for the finding the points of contact and distinctive features of the concepts “праздник” and “^0” in two different linguacultures. In our work we place emphasis on its language embodiment in literary poetic texts. The results of the given research can be used in a situation of interlanguage translation to define the most effective translation strategy, allowing for the depiction of a cultural peculiarity of the original text in the language of translation (target language).
New Year in Chine and Russia: Differences and Similarities
The concepts “праздник” and “^0” are the hyperonyme concepts which include different hyponyme concepts: “#^”, “New Year”, “Новый год”; “40”, “Birthday”, “День рождения” and etc. The hyponyme concept contains the core part (“holiday”) and different characteristics
reflecting the holiday particularities (occasion, time, attributes). We attempt to examine in detail cultural features of celebrating New Year in Russia and China and define similarities and distinctions of understanding the concept “holiday” in the two compared cultures.
New Year in Russia is observed on January, 1st, which corresponds to the middle of winter: «Году начало - зиме середка» (“Beginning to Year - middle to winter”); «Перелом зимы» (“Winter is on turning point”). Thus, in Russia it is on a fixed calendar date. New Year in China is determined in accordance with the lunar calendar (as a rule, it is celebrated in spring) and falls on different dates every year (2009 - on January, 26, 2010 - on February, 14, 2011 - on February, 3). It is at this time in China that nature awakes from cold weather, it becomes warm, that is to say, the end of the cold, winter period comes Й^А#М1 (it becomes warm, spring wind blows).
In Russia New Year is, first of all, a new calendar year, the beginning of everything new and good. Therefore the idea of the new is also presented in traditional New Year’s congratulations in Russia: “Happy New Year!
I wish you new happiness!” People wait for the new and good in the coming New Year. As this holiday is considered to be a family holiday, as a rule, it is celebrated at home with all the family members, close friends and relatives. People give presents and gifts to each other; and visit each other during the holidays. On New Year’s Eve the holiday is celebrated with colleagues in the form of corporate evenings. Father Frost brings presents to children who believe that this fairytale grandpa exists. This invented character that is the symbol of the New Year holiday, along with a New Year tree that is traditionally decorated before the holiday.
In China New Year is the beginning of spring, a holiday which is celebrated in the bosom of the family at a festive table. In the
streets decorated with traditional New Year’s lanterns and spring pair inscriptions, different celebrations with fireworks and firecrackers are arranged. Traditional congratulations include such expressions as “Ш^-‘№:^!” (Cheerful New Year!), “Й^№” (Wish you a Happy New Year!)
. The idea of “New” characterizes the holiday of New Year both in Russia, and in China. In the Russian name of the holiday (“Новый год”) this idea is expressed explicitly in the name of the holiday itself. In the Chinese culture the given idea is presented implicitly. Literally the Chinese characters “#^” are translated as “spring” and “holiday” that designates “new year”.
Important attributes and emblems of New Year in China are spring pair inscriptions (synonymic nominative units are П^ - opposite to a door, - spring labels, - couplets, and ^^- steams). Pair inscriptions contain wishes and the congratulations written on red strips of paper. Pair inscriptions, as a rule, are hung out on both parts of a door during the period of New Year. Though the history of the origin of pair inscriptions containing self-congratulations is not a subject of this article it should be noted that in the Chinese culture there are many legends and stories about the appearance of spring pair inscriptions, connected with evil ghosts and protection against them. Spring pair inscriptions are a unique phenomenon of Chinese culture and its celebration of the New Year (ЗШ1& 2009).
There are certain rules of writing and posting spring pair inscriptions: inscriptions are hung out from left to right; the structure and word order in the right and left part should be identical and symmetrical giving an underlying harmony and an aestheticism to the cultural phenomenon; intonation of the left and right part of the inscriptions should closely coincide; the meaning of the left and right part should not be identical; finally, the most important sense of
spring inscriptions is contained in a horizontal inscription which is hung out on the center in the top part between lateral vertical inscriptions 2007). For example:
If this
inscription were placed on both sides of a door, it would look as follows:
# Ш Ш #
% Й
к s
Ж Ш
That is, the top inscription bears the basic sense of all inscriptions: “Celebration of the Chinese New Year”, the left part - “A dragon is followed by all rivers”, the right part - “A tiger passes through thousand mountains”. The general sense of the spring inscription is “Everybody celebrates the New year - the year of a tiger”. The presence of spring pair inscriptions in Chinese culture is not the only example of cultural differences in celebrating the New Year in China and in Russia. But spring pair inscriptions are an integral part of the Chinese culture and a graphic evidence of its uniqueness.
Concepts “праздник” and “^0” in Russian and Chinese Poetry: Pretranslational and Conceptual analysis
In this part we present our analysis of some Russian and Chinese poetic texts describing the celebration of New Year (Orlovskaya, 1966; Poets, 1972; 2007; ЖЖ, 2009;
fs, 2007) in order to identify the similarities and distinctions of the two concepts “праздник” and “^0” in their respective linguacultures.
The following Russian poem written in December, 1754, congratulates the Russian empress Catherine II on the occasion of New
Year: “Verses to Her Imperial Majesty, Great and Most Gracious Our Monarchess (on Fireworks on January, 1st, 1755)” (Poets, 1972:103):
... Всё то, что скипетр твой, богиня,
освещает,
Восток, запад, север, юг усердием горит, Начавши от Двины, огнь праздничный
пылает
По дальнейшей Амур, что Хин от нас делит. И с восклицанием во всех странах шумящим Языки разными вещает твой народ:
Да новое тебе и всем тебе служащим Явится счастие в начавшийся сей год.
Тебе и всей твоей фамилии, богиня, Благополучны дни обильный сыплет рог; Тебе рождается днесь новая година И с новым счастием вступает в твой чертог; Да колом так твоей судьбины обращает,
Как подданны тебе счастливых просят дней; Да выше твой орел с дня на день возлетает И счастие цветет во всей стране твоей.
In this poem the author N.N. Popovsky wishes the empress, her family and all her country new happiness and safe days: “новое счастие, обильный рог, счастливые дни, счастие цветет, огнь праздничный, благополучные дни”. A predominant theme is the theme of a wish of happiness. Happiness is considered the basic idea of the approach of a New Year. The lexical units “счастие” and “счастливый” are used five times in the text. The whole text of a poem is written as congratulations to a concrete addressee, expressing celebratory the mood of the author and his personal perception of a holiday. The holiday of New Year is celebrated by all people living in her (“ее”) country, “с восклицанием шумящим” (that means noisy and cheerful). The happiness theme is closely connected with a theme of the new: “Да, новое тебе ...”, “начавшийся сей год”, “вступает в
твои чертог , рождается днесь новая година , “с новым счастием”.
Alexander Blok in the poem «Ночь на Новыи год» “Night for New Year”, written on December, 31, 1901 describes a frosty silent New Year with “холодными туманами”, “темными улицами”:
Лежат холодные туманы,
Горят багровые костры.
Душа морозная Светланы 2 В мечтах таинственной игры.
Скрипнет снег - сердца займутся -Снова тихая луна.
За воротами смеются,
Дальше - улица темна.
In this poetic text we see that New Year in understanding of the author is a frosty weather, the silent moon, night with dark streets, laughter of people, and the crunch of snow. The female name “Svetlana” is an embodiment of the unmarried girls fortunetelling in the Christmas-tide3 for New Year. A Christmas-tide coincides with the celebration of New Year and is accompanied by a fortunetelling, singing, disguising and dancing (Nekrylova, 2007).
Now we turn to the analysis of some other Chinese poems. The eve before New Year «^
is an important event for Chinese people. This is the time when relatives and close friends gather together at home, remember last year and look towards the future: “—5^^ ^^” that means: “one night connects two years (old and new), time4 (24 hours) is shared by two years”.
«^» ( ) (618 - 907)
* Й^А#Мо
The poem “Night before New Year” is written by the Emperor Shimin of the Tan dynasty (689 - 740). In his understanding and figurative interpretation the arrival of a New Year is a penetration of spring light into the imperial palace and imperial halls, change of cold winter with snow into a warm spring breeze, a change of the old year to a new year, a parting of an old year and a meeting of a new one. (The literal translation5 of the given poem into Russian and English is as follows: “Под вечер зал наполняется душистым ароматом, годы в прекрасном дворце, уходит холод, мороз и снег, на смену приходит теплый весенний ветер, слой душистого запаха распустившихся абрикосовых однотонных деревьев обвивает пампушки, похожие на красные свечи, уходит старый год, встречаем новый год”; “Towards evening the hall is filled with fragrant aroma, years in a fine palace, the cold, the frost and snow leaves, the warm spring wind of change comes, the layer of a fragrant smell of the dismissed apricot monophonic trees twists donuts, like red candles, old year leaves, we meet New Year”).
Another poet of the beginning of 8th century Meng Haoran writes about Spring festival (Chinese New Year):
(“В канун Нового года никто не спит, каждая семья ждет прихода духовного и хорошего”; “On the New Year’s Eve nobody sleeps, each family waits for the arrival of spiritual and good comings”).
But there are people, for whom New Year is not expectation of something new and good for them, there is grief and longing for their native home. Celebrating New Year far from the family, such people suffer from loneliness and separation from their native home. Poet Gao Shi of the Tan dynasty writes in his poem:
Ж* Я'ШВДШХ—^”. The literal translation
is: “Вдали от дома тысячу километров, с
завтрашнего утра снова год”; “Far from home one thousand kilometers, since tomorrow’s morning again next year comes”.
The poet of Sun dynasty (960 - 1279) describes life during New Year’s Eve:
НШ *
{ёДЙЙ ” “Хотелось бы пригласить
Новогоднюю ночь в чужеземный дом, чтобы цвет свечи обернулся в знакомый образ. Тридцать шесть лет пролетело впустую, но с этой ночи будет все по-другому”; “The main character of the poem wants to invite New Year’s Eve to his home abroad, but he regrets about time lived in vain, for 36 years it was all a waste of time, he had achieved nothing in life but he hopes to save time the next year”.
The analysis of the Chinese poetic texts shows that a New Year is not only the arrival of spring, the expectation of something good and spiritual for Chinese people, but also the analysis of events and a time for summing up. It is of great importance to be together at home with one’s the family during the New Year’s Eve. New Year for Russians is an expectation of new happiness in the new year, cold winter weather. The idea of family is presented in both the Russian, and the Chinese understanding of celebrating New Year, but for Chinese people this idea is stronger and more significant.
Now we are going to consider the structure of the concepts “праздник” and “^0”” in their hyponymic versions “Новый год” and “#^”. For a more detailed description of the concepts we turn to cognitive linguistics studying a problem of definition of concept structure based on the theory of frames where cognitive classifiers are potential slots of the frame which can represent the given concept in various texts. According to I.M. Kobozeva a frame is a knowledge structure presenting an information package containing a certain fragment of human experience. A frame consists of slots, the number of which corresponds
to the number of elements, recognized in the given fragment of experience. “A slot has a name specifying the parameter, and contains information about the meaning which the given parameter takes from the given type of objects or from the given specific copy” (Kobozeva, 2004: 65). Cognitive interpretation of the results of the description of semantic volume of the concept is subjective; therefore researchers can allocate various slots in the same frame.
The structure of the concepts “holiday” and “^0” could be considered through the example of a popular national holiday New Year (in Russia) and Spring Festival (in China), usually called Chinese New Year in Russia. To present the concept “holiday” its structural form is used in the form of the frame. The potential frame structure of the concept “holiday” can have the following regular slots: 1) “celebrating time”, 2) “reason for celebration”, 3) “traditions of celebrating”, 4) “celebratory congratulations”, 5) “relations between the addressee and the sender of congratulation”, 6) “presents”, 7) “celebratory meal”, 8) “holiday attributes”, etc. The presented slots will be common for both linguacultures, but the components filling the slots, will be different due to the cultural asymmetry.
Using the material of poetic texts in Russian and Chinese (written in different historical and cultural periods of Russia and China) we will fill the regular slots of the New Year holiday in the two studied linguacultures below in Table 1.
Conclusion
Studying key concepts for the consideration of particular features of conceptualization in related and unrelated linguacultures and gives interesting material for the researcher in the fields of comparative linguistics, translation theory and practice, and intercultural communication.
The above analysis of Russian and Chinese poetic texts has shown that the concept
Table 1. Regular slots of the New Year Holiday
Slot New Year in Russia Spring Festival in China
Celebrating time Зима, снег, мороз, холод, ночь, 31 декабря - 1 января, 12 часов ночи, луна (spring), 1M3^ (January - March), (apricot trees in blossom), (spring wind), 5H (time from 3 in the morning till 5 in the morning), PJK (lunar calendar)
Celebrating reason Наступление нового календарного года (the beginning of spring), (next year)
Traditions of celebrating Семейный праздник, родственники, нерабочие дни, посещение гостей, подарки (family holiday that is celebrated far from home), (a waste of time)
Relations between the addressee and the sender of a congratulation Друзья, родственники, близкие (relatives), (family), US (friends)
Celebratory congratulations Поздравлять, желать, новое счастье, радость, веселье, благополучные дни (see off the old and welcome the new)
Presents Фрукты, алкоголь, свечи, игрушки, конфеты 7K^(fruits), (new clothes), (¿& (alcohol),^^ (toys), (red paper money), (greeting cards)
Celebratory meal Праздничный стол, мандарины, салат оливье, шампанское, бокал вина (dumplings,), (New Year’s cake), —(a variety of food on the holiday table)
Holiday attributes Новогодняя елка, Дед Мороз, Снегурочка, бумажные снежинки, фейерверки, свечи, мишура, серпантин, бенгальские огни (spring pair inscriptions), (fireworks), (2010 - ) the animal sign of sixty year cycle, (inverted Chinese character Happiness), ¿Ift (red color)
“holiday”, especially New Year in Russia is, first of all, the beginning of a new life. Traditional lexemes that characterize Russian New Year are: “зима” (“winter”), “новогодняя елка” (“New Year tree”), “Дед Мороз” (“Father Frost”), “мандарины” (“tangerines”), “выходные нерабочие дни” (“holidays, days-off”). New Year in China is also the beginning of something new, but the holiday is strongly associated with nature, with the arrival of spring, the beginning of awakening both in nature, and in the spiritual life of Chinese people celebrating approach of New Year. In the Chinese texts following lexemes are presented: Ш ) *
Ш^* Й&* Ж, «* #P* %
0.^0 “spring pair inscriptions”, “character happiness” (turned upside down), “greeting
cards”, “red color”, “fireworks”, “jiaozi”, “spring”, “Feast of Lanterns”. The occurrence of the element “spring pair inscriptions” in the slot “celebratory congratulations” of the concept “^0” differentiates the concept maintenance “holiday” and concept “^0”.
Through the analysis of texts of the Russian and Chinese poetic literature, some peculiar features of New Year have been revealed. In ancient China poets wrote about New Year as about the arrival of new spiritual life and light to their life and nature, comparing the New Year’s Eve with «whiff of a spring breeze and light which gets into the house». Also grief and loneliness could be seen in the New Year poems. Those who are far from their families, and those who, looking back at the years passed, remember
and analyze their acts, making promises to themselves “to appreciate time” the next year. All this characterizes Chinese people as very serious and responsible people who, despite possessing such a cheerful national holiday, do not have fun, but concentrate on their inner world and state of mind.
We have specified some cognitive qualifiers of the concept “holiday” by means of the structural form in the form of the frame; we also have defined similarities and distinctions which, first of all, are connected with cultural features of the respective countries, with their respective traditions of celebrating a specific holiday. New Year in Russia and in China is celebrated at different time (winter, spring). The holiday attributes are also different (a New Year tree, pair inscriptions). But it is impossible to deny the fact that there are some common features in celebrating the holiday: fun and joy, pleasure usually shared with the family, friends and fellow- workers, gifts presented to each other, celebratory meal, and, of course, New Year wishes and congratulations.
Taking into consideration the integrative and differential elements in the two compared concepts will allow the translator to choose the most effective strategy of interpretation. Along with the issues related to the linguistic theory of poetic texts, linguists, translators and specialists in translation theory pay particular attention to the development of the theory of poetic translation (Razumovskaya, 2010). The cultural specificity of the original text can be expressed in the text of translation. One such strategy is the strategy of foreignization (i.e. there is a propensity for the preservation of the name of a reality from the original language into the language of translation) (Voskoboinik, 2004) presuming preservation of cultural strategy and uniqueness of the original text in the text of translation the given strategy can be used as one of the possible translation strategies when translating in the language pair of unrelated languages and cultures. The pretranslational analysis based on the peculiar features of the concept content allows for the improvement of the target text quality.
1 The poem by Emperor Li Shimin «The Night before New Year. »
2 Here А. Blok refers to the work by V. Zhukovsky “Svetlana”: “Раз в крещенский вечерок девушки гадали.”
3 The twelve days of Christmas is the time from Christmas to Epiphany O.S. from 24th December to 6th January. New Year
(St. Basil’s Day) - 01 January, Thus divides the twelve days of Christmas into two parts: the first one traditionally was
called “holy evenings” before New Year, and the second one - “scary evenings” after it (A. Nekrylova).
4 Ancient Chinese represented time by five two-hour parts of the night called5. The parts from 7 o’clock in the evening to 5 o’clock in the morning are the following: the first part - from 7 till 9 p.m. (^), the second - from 9 till 11 p.m. (Ж), the third - from 11 p.m. till 1 a.m. (^), the fourth - from 1 till 3 a.m. (Ж) and the fifth - from 3 till 5 a.m. (Ш).
5 From here on all expressions in Chinese will be presented in author’s translation.
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Концепты «праздник» и «^0»: лингвокультурный и предпереводческий аспекты
В.А. Разумовская, К.А. Кардаш
Сибирский федеральный университет Россия 660041, Красноярск, пр. Свободный, 79
Данная статья посвящена изучению концептов «праздник» и «^0» в двух типологически, генеалогически и культурно различных языках: в русском и китайском. Межкультурная коммуникация включает в себя различные аспекты функционирования концептов в культурной, лингвистической и переводческой областях. Исследование русского и китайского концепта «праздник» и «^0» позволяет выявить отличия, схожие когнитивные и семантические компоненты в двух разных языках и культурах, а также выявить их языковые воплощения. В анализе был использован метод фреймов и слотов и описательный метод. Примеры текстов мы взяли из русской и китайской поэзии.
Ключевые слова: концепт, русский, китайский, межкультурная коммуникация, межъязыковой перевод, фреймы, слоты, когнитивные компоненты.
