Interpretations of the Poems "Kateryna" and "My Testament" by Taras Shevchenko in the Translations of John Weir (In the Paradigm of Ecological Translation)

Abstract

Background. The introduction provides a brief overview of the major translations of Shevchenko's works into English and the first reviews of Shevchenko's work in foreign criticism. Methods.The method of comparative translation, historical and philological analysis, the method of quantitative calculations, as well as the ecological theory used in modern translation studies are applied. Results. The article analyzes the methodological features of the interpretation of Taras Shevchenko's original works "Kateryna" and "My Testament" on the example of John Weir's English translations; in the context of the principles of ecological translation studies, the author considers certain techniques of English poetic translation that allow achieving semantic correspondence with the original while preserving ethno-cultural information. According to Nazim Hikmet, "...there are poets of one city, one village, one nation, but there are poets of all cities, all villages, all nations". Taras Shevchenko became such a poet – a poet of all nations – for the world, and his works continue to interest and excite not only Ukrainians, but also the Western world. Conclusions. The proof of this is the fact that today Shevchenko is translated into English, the most widespread language in the world, more intensively than ever before. And each translator interprets the works of this Ukrainian genius poet in a slightly different way, depending on the peculiarities of the cultural environment in which the translator was born and works. All these peculiarities of the translator's linguistic and cultural profile in the environment of their specific culture are studied by a new field of translation studies called ecotranslatology, or ecological translation studies, within which the research for this article was conducted.