Особенности перевода при раннем естественном двуязычии: casestudy с итало-русским билингвом (Osobennosti perevoda pri rannem estestvennom dvujazyčii: casestudy s italo-russkim bilingvom)

Despite the fact that questions regarding translation in bilingualism have occupied the attention of
researchers for several decades, the specific translation strategies of “early” bilingual persons are
still not very well understood. Among the causes of this situation is the relative lack of long-term
studies of the development of bilingual translation skills, which in the case of Russian as a second
language is particularly notable. However, the acquisition of more precise data regarding this
phenomenon is of great importance not only for cognitive science, but also from the point of view
of the effective teaching of translation as a professional activity to young as well as adult bilinguals.
In addition, studies to date have usually focused on the detection of errors in translation into the
second language. However, as it turns out, the quality of translation into the native language
depends, to a large extent, on the degree of bilingualism.
This article is a case study, using as its subject for this experiment in translation, an “early” natural
bilingual person whose first language was Italian and whose second language was Russian. His
translations from Russian into Italian were compared with those of bilingual adults and also
speakers of Italian who began, by choice, to study Russian in adulthood. Contrastive analysis
showed that the early, naturally bilingual translator employed a much greater variety of types of
transformations, among which were, principally, omission, addition, semantic generalization and
substitution, syntactical reformulation and modification. On the other hand, the “late” bilinguals
gave priority to semantic accuracy. In addition, the bilingual translator was more successful in
idiomatic appropriateness and achieved greater stylistic and genre competence. His translations
were more attuned to the culture of the target language and took more account of the perception
threshold of the hypothetical reader/listener.
At the same time, the translations of the “early” bilingual subject showed marked weaknesses such
as excessive arbitrariness, linguistically unmotivated application of transformations and
overconfidence in the interpretation of the original text.