TRANSLATION OF A PART OF THE OLONKHO “SARYN NYURGUSTAI” PERFORMED BY D. A. TOMSKAYA INTO JAPANESE

Abstract

The article tells about the translation of a part of the olonkho Saryn Nyurgustaiby D. A. Tomskaya into the Japanese language, which was performed at the Tokyo Summer Festival in 1997. D. A. Tomskaya and A. E. Solovev are the first olonkho narrators, who introduced the Sakha epos to the Japanese audience. In her art, D. A. Tomskaya was preserving the oral folk epic tradition. The text of the olonkho, translated into the Japanese language, was the original manuscript of Tomskaya’s narration, written down by V. S. Nikiforova and A. I. Innokenteva. The text abounds in ethnic cultural realia and figurative expressions, which are difficult for translation. The realia were conveyed into Japanese mainly through transliteration with commentary, translation of word meaning and description. These words include the names of objects, things of everyday use (serge, billerik), words and expressions related to the world view (Orto Doidu, Aiyy Kiһite), words indicating the age of cattle, the names of measures of length, etc. The focus is on translating them through transliteration with commentary, translating on the basis of meanings and using descriptions. Comments were as laconic as possible.

The transliteration of the words expressing realia, and names of the olonkho characters was complicated by the differences between the phonetic systems of the Sakha and Japanese languages. The absence of some Yakut sounds (ө, ү, ы, ҕ, ҥ) in the Japanese language hampered an adequate transmission. We had to choose from several options one, the most, in our opinion, closely reflecting the originality of the original pronunciation.

Also, the ways of transferring Russian borrowings were considered separately, the use of which in the passage is interesting because the narrator did not speak Russian. Some of these borrowings are firmly embedded in the everyday vocabulary of a modern Sakha-speaking person (ньуоска, биилкэ), and some (босоол, болбуот) are quite rare. Russian borrowings transmit the individual style of the narrator and, thus, give a certain stylistic color to the entire passage. The article gives examples of translating Russian borrowings into Japanese through borrowing (mainly from English) and through words with a certain stylistic coloring.

The article is intended for specialists involved in the translation of epics and linguists.

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