THE "UNTRANSLATABLE" LANGUAGE OF ZOSCHENKO: IN THE REALM OF INCONGRUITY

Abstract

There are many factors that may condition the reception of a certain author or a certain literary work abroad. One of these factors is the text’s resistance to translation, that is, to which extent it is culture-dependent and connected to a specific worldview, to a specific reality. The untranslatability of the text frequently lies in the author’s style, in his particular manner to tell the story and in the language that he uses. Mikhail Zoshchenko can be definitely considered a “difficult” author in that sense, a real headache for translators. Consequently, the purpose of this article is to reveal the reasons for such difficulty and investigate the translational problems that Zoshchenko´s satirical stories present from cultural and linguistic points of view.