PORTRAIT OF THE CHARACTER PUGACHEV IN A.S. PUSHKIN’S NOVEL THE CAPTAIN’S DAUGHTER: FROM THE ORIGINAL TO THE TRANSLATION

Abstract

The novel The Captain's Daughter by Pushkin has been acknowledged by researchers as a prose encyclopedia about Russian life in the late 18th century. In this work, Pushkin proved himself not only a responsible historian, but also a talented portrait painter. This article is aimed at clarifying the art of creating the portrait of the character Pugachev in Pushkin's novel The Captain's Daughter. By making a comparison between the original and the translation by Professor Cao Xuan Hao, we have found that the translator has made fairly accurate depictions of the characters. However, there remain some limitations in the Vietnamese translation, including the incorrect translation of several portrait features of the characters and the omission of some details. These drawbacks, on the one hand, have reduced the expressiveness of the characters’ portraits; on the other hand, they have hindered the readers from fully perceiving the spirit of the original work.