CORPUS LINGUISTIC ANALYSISOF CHRISTIAN TERMINOLOGYIN RUSSIAN TRANSLATIONSOF THE KNIGHT IN THE PANTHER’S SKIN

Abstract

The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, the poem by Shota Rustaveli is one of the exceptional masterpieces of Georgian national literature. The poem has not lost its actuality and has been an object of permanent research and popularization since the period of its creation. Accordingly, the importance of our research topic is cultivated by the significance of the poem itself. With the use of modern methods, the Rustvelological research takes a much wider scope and expands the possibilities of the poem’s promotion and accessibility to the researchers interested in the subject. The popularization of The Knight in the Panther’s Skin has been significantly assisted by Russian translations, which served as a source text for the translations into other languages. Our goal is to apply the method of corpus linguistic analysis to the study of the Christian terminology identified in The Knight in the Panther’s Skin in Russian translations, namely, in complete poetic translations by Konstantin Balmont, Shalva Nutsubidze, and Archil Khalvashi. Based on empirical material, we will try to evaluate the degree of equivalence in translations, analyze the relationship between the source and the translation, as well as the translations themselves, and identify the translation principles and strategies of every translator. The conclusions formulated as a result of the research are made on the basis of the electronically processed empirical material, which significantly increases the degree of empiricality of the work. Also, the corpus linguistic analysis of the translations will contribute to the development of digital Kartvelology and, specifically, to the development of Rustvelology. Thus, we believe, the article will be beneficial to the reader interested in the topic both theoretically and practically.