Russian-Chinese Inaccurate Translation From the Perspective of the Representativeness of Translation at the Microlevel

Representativeness of translation is a concept proposed by the famous modern Russian translation theorist S.V. Tyulenev. The translation text must correctly reflect the main theme and purpose of the source text at the macro level, correctly convey the tone of the author’s narrative and his attitude to the described realities, and in order to achieve representativeness at the macrolevel, the translator must achieve representativeness in the details that make up the whole, i. e. to realize representativeness at the microlevel. Object: in this work, the monumental creation of Leo N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” and its Chinese translation are taken as an example for study. The author alternately analyzes translation examples from the point of view of representativeness at the phonetic level, the level of word-formation models, as well as at the grammatical, lexical and syntactic levels, from different points of view investigating the causes of errors in Russian-Chinese translation. Methods: comparative analysis, generalization, correction and systematization. Findings: achieving the representativeness of a translation at the microlevel does not affect its representativeness at the macrolevel, but errors in translations that have not reached representativeness at the macrolevel can manifest themselves at any of the microlevels. Conclusions: in their professional practice, translators should strive for representativeness of translation not only at the macrolevel, but also make every effort to achieve representativeness at the microlevels described above. This will allow them to carry out the translation closest to the source text and reproduce as accurately as possible the ideological content that the author of the source text wanted to convey to the reader.