Uliana Saveleva

Stylistic transformations in official English translations of public speeches of President Putin

The purpose of this research is to consider public speeches of President Putin and their official English translations. The focal points of the study are stylistic transformations in translations of the above speeches and translation of putinisms – special emphatic phrases or expressions used by President Putin in his public speeches which are characterized by emotional potential in the context.

The previous studies show that President Putin has a characteristic style of constructing public speeches, in which brevity, clarity of formulation problems and their solutions, inherent in political discourse, are combined with popular language, slang and sometimes rude forms of expressing thoughts.

The analysis of the English translations of 123 V.Putin’s speeches taken from the President’s official site (en.kremlin.ru/) reveals the following functions of putinisms: 1) drawing the audience’s attention; 2) persuasion; 3) evaluation of the events in question; 4) forming the orator’s individual style.

Upon comparing of the above translations with the translations of the same speeches by BBC, Russia Today, and some other news agencies and official establishments (obamawhitehouse.archives.gov), it becomes clear that two opposing tendencies can be traced: 1) decreasing the emotional component and transformation of stylistic colour of the speech, and 2) translating very close to the original, with very few transformations.

Uliana Saveleva, PhD, associate professor, the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation, Astrakhan State University, Russia.