Russian-Belarusian Rhythmic Transfer: Translations of Iambic Tetrameter

The work examines the role of poetic translation of the twentieth century from Russian into Belarusian and from Belarusian into Russian (lines of iambic tetrameter). It describes the history of translation between these two cultures in a situation of actual bilingualism and the pragmatics of such translations. A statistical study of the rhythmic structure of “original and translation” text pairs is carried out; the results are compared with generalized data on Russian and Belarusian verse of the corresponding period. Comparative historical analysis allows to see translation as an agent of rhythmic transfer between two poetic traditions, which clarifies the role of translation in the formation of the Belarusian iambic versification and indicates one of the possible ways of mutual influence of the Russian and Belarusian poetic traditions. As a result of this analysis, a hypothesis is put forward that the active translation of the works of Pushkin and Lermontov in the 30s significantly influenced the development of Belarusian iambic. Despite this, some original features of Belarusian verse can be traced in the translations, such as a large number of additional stresses and the permissibility of shifting the stress (especially around the third strong position). At the same time, translators from Belarusian into Russian mostly try to avoid such obvious deviations from the meter, bringing the rhythm of the translation closer to classical or contemporary Russian models.

DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2024.1.07