Intralingual translation in the XXIst century: determining the status

Abstract

The article deals with the notion of intralingual translation, once obscure, that has been of use in own country for some two decades. Consequently, it has not received the acknowledgement of Russian linguists it deserves. However, a number of prominent linguists have paid attention to this phenomenon, among them V.N. Komissarov, V.S. Vinogradov, A.N. Parshin and L.L. Nelyubin. But they have given only definitions and the general idea and, besides, over fifteen years have elapsed since then. Fortunately, the growing number of articles, published in Russian journals and conference proceedings in the last decade is an index of its topicality.Intralingual translation can be either diachronic or synchronic, the latter falls into interdialectal and normalising, considering texts in jargon or slang. Intralingual translation differs from adaptation in that it concerns in-depth transformation of the text, and not only replacement of archaic words with modern ones.Diachronic translation is all about old texts, written in the same language at one of its earlier stages, and translated into a modern tongue, in particular translation of middle English texts, such as “The Canterbury tales”, into present-day English, whereas contemporary fiction has been investigated to a lesser degree, which opens up a wide field of study as regards the Russian language, as well as the “modernization” of the works fiction, written in the previous centuries, as well as “politically correct” changes. Of particular interest is the translation of a text from one genre or functional style to another.We believe that the present article will make a valuable contribution to translation studies in our country, for it is the first one that sums up everything that was done by Russian linguists on the topic. We, on our part, have scrutinized the available scientific papers and given an analysis of the phenomena. The study of intra-lingual translation undertaken by foreign linguists requires special attention, that will be done in a separate article.