Translating S. Danilov’s poem “Sakha Dance” into Russian: a self-translation analysis

Abstract

   This article is devoted to the analysis of the Russian translation of S. Danilov’s poem “The Sakha Dance”. The author’s own translation is examined in terms of conveying the poet’s personal, authorial stance toward the world, as well as the expression of his emotions and feelings.    The relevance of the study  lies in the fact that, within Yakut scholarship, the issues of translating poetic texts into Russian, along with their quality and specific features, have not been the subject of dedicated investigation.    The aim of the work  is to identify an optimal approach for rendering the author’s subjective attitude, his emotional state, and his figurative perception of the world.     The research objectives  include the analysis of scholarly literature in accordance with the stated aim, a description of the Russian translation of Semyon Danilov’s poem “The Sakha Dance”, and an assessment of the author’s own translation from the perspectives of adequacy, equivalence, and overall translation quality.    The methodological basis of the research is A.V. Fedorov’s concept of “full-fledged translation”, whose key notions are adequacy and equivalence. The study employs such methods as cultural-historical, comparative-typological, and structural analysis, the principle of motif analysis, as well as descriptive, comparative, and logical modes of comparison, which allow for the identification of intertextual connections and semantic transformations. The author concludes that a translation’s fidelity to the original is unattainable without a high-quality interlinear (literal) translation; a poetic translation should correspond as closely as possible to the original in both content and form, preserving the original’s aesthetic and emotional impact on the reader. It is emphasized that a combination of literal and free translation strategies makes it possible to retain the author’s intention, compositional structure, and rhyming patterns, to select precise equivalents, to avoid significant rearrangements, omissions, and distortions, while also complying with the norms of the Russian language and producing a harmonious and cohesive text. The prospects for further research lie in expanding the scholarly domain in terms of synchronic and diachronic approaches to literary translation, which will ultimately enhance the quality of poetic translation and its correspondence to the original, as well as the potential for combining various translation strategies.