Abstract

The creative legacy of great American modernist writer Ernest Hemingway presents a huge interest both for the linguists and literary critics. His books have been translated into a great majority of languages, his creative activity and personal style of writing has been investigated by literary critics and linguists at different times, his life and personality has been described extensively by his biographers, researchers and people who knew him personally. Nevertheless, both his biography and the value of his literary works have always been the object of debates. Scholars have always argued about the linguistic value of his style of writing; for some linguists Hemingway’s style seemed too simple to be analysed. Others, and they are in majority, find his style complicated, idiosyncratic and heterogeneous with the very peculiar choice of language means. Therefore, translation of Hemingway’s stories and novels creates challenges for translators trying to achieve the greatest degree of adequacy. Contrary to the opinion of some scholars and critics, such as D. H. Lawrence, Louis Kronenberger, Schuyler Ashley and others, Hemingway’s prose is rich in figures of speech, such as metaphor, metonymy, repetition, simile and others. While translating Hemingway’s prose into Russian, the translators managed to find the adequate solution to the stylistic difficulties of the original by means of resorting to analogue translation, compensation and other techniques analysed in this article. The article focuses on revealing the linguistic and cultural complexity of adequate transformation of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories into Russian, paying special attention to his unique style. The article also emphasizes the fact of neutralization and decoration of some original phrases used by translators into Russian which didn’t affect the level of adequacy of the target text. 

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