Reflection of modernity in the translation interpretation of Nikolai Gogol's comedy The Government Inspector by Alistair Beaton
Authors:   Tomsk State University, Stepovaya Valeriya I. , Tretyakov Evgeniy O. ,   Tomsk State University
Published: February 2023

The article examines the translation interpretation of Nikolai Gogol's comedy The Government Inspector by Alistair Beaton, embodied in its theatrical adaptation in 2005. Since one of the main factors on the basis of which the interpretation is formed is the cultural and historical context, it seems legitimate to analyze the translation from the point of view of modern world tendencies' influence. This will help to trace the semantic transformations of Gogol's idea. The methodology is based on the comparative, biographical methods, contextual analysis, as well as content analysis of Gogol's comedy and its translation. The peculiarities of the play's epigraph and the list of actors' translation allow us to say that, in this variant of the comedy, a person is totally impersonal and unrelated to others. This is also indicated by the reduction of the author's idiomatic and colloquial elements in the characters' speech, which loses its role as a means of communication, “becoming instead a jungle of obfuscation and deceit”; the language becomes valuable in itself. In addition, the disunity is indicated by the unwillingness / inability of the characters to show understanding towards each other. In addition, due to numerous changes, the author's structure of the play is not preserved, and its new version is chaotic. All this can be explained by the influence of postmodern tendencies, as well as the modern British cultural and historical context. This also explains the fact that a person is isolated from the universe, which is most clearly expressed in the situation with Dobchinsky, who postulates that “life is full of mysteries” while what is happening is not at all enigmatic. Here the irony with which Beaton looks at his heroes becomes obvious. This technique also manifests itself in bringing their vices to the ugly-comic limit. In connection with total “deafness” and misunderstanding, the theme of total loneliness becomes important, as indicated by the poems quoted by Khlestakov. His focus on the importance of universal values and the ontology of life simultaneously with the use of postmodernism techniques can be associated with a new, metamodern “feeling structure” characterized by a sense of oscillation between postmodern and pre-postmodern tendencies. Thus, in translation, the author's idea becomes a reflection of the current era tendencies, demonstrating the separation of people from each other and the rejection of real human values in favour of material benefits because of which the conflict cannot be resolved. Gogol's interpretation does not have such unambiguity. Nevertheless, the importance of value attitudes for Beaton may indicate meta-modernist tendencies, which can still be called a positive phenomenon. The view of the translator at the same time is his own understanding of the meaning of Gogol's comedy, taking into account modern realities. In this regard, it cannot be said that Gogol's author task is deliberately opposed by Beaton to his translation.