Culture Specific Information in “Eugene Oneginˮ by A.S. Pushkin: Rendering Strategies in Portuguese Translations

Abstract

The paper focuses on identifying and methodizing key strategies and ways of rendering culture specific information in Portuguese translations of Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin and aims at assessing their adequacy. Culture differences between Russia, Portugal, and Brazil provide grounds for cross-cultural barriers, the negative effect of which could be minimized if translation bridges the gap between the source and target cultural worlds. This research relies on culture specific lexical items known as ‘realia’ to examine how culture code is transferred in Russian-to-Portuguese translation of fiction. The study resulted in a new translation model providing an algorithm for rendering culture specific words. The model uses a complex of criteria that allow assessing equivalence and adequacy of items in the target language to those in the source language. Applying the model in the course of Russian-to-Portuguese translation will advance theoretically motivated decisions and contribute to the methodology of pre-translation fiction text analysis.