TRANSLATION OF RELIGIOUS EPISTOLARY TEXT FROM RUSSIAN INTO FRENCH: CASE STUDY OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE AND HOW TO BE ATTUNED TO IT? BY ST. THEOPHAN THE RECLUSE

The article focuses on the study of specifics inherent in the translation of religious texts, in particular, those belonging to epistolary genre. The research is based on the comparison of the Russian and French texts of The Spiritual Life and How to Be Attuned To It? by St. Theophan the Recluse with a special emphasis on the analysis of the author's individual style, characterized by specific features at all language levels. The study allowed to identify the main types of translation transformations and to analyze the efficiency of their use. While the syntactic structure of original phrases was predominantly preserved in the translation, the lexical level required a number of transformations, including transposition and calque. In certain cases, the translator used the appropriate French partial equivalent of a Russian word. Certain features of the original text, such as neologisms, were not translated text due to the structural differences between the Russian and French languages. The research demonstrates that in the majority of cases the translator managed to convey the stylistics of the original text.