Tatiana S. Nalitch

This article demonstrates the current situation in the field of literary translation from oriental languages into Russian, providing an overview of the translated works from Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Persian, Arabic, Indian and Kyrgyz literatures of different eras — from antiquity to the present — in terms of their content and volume. In addition, it highlights the specific features of literary and artistic translation from oriental languages. For example, much thought should be put into translation of the realities that characterize the oriental cultures: in particular, specific idioms and exoticisms. The question is raised as to how far the translation should deviate from the original: should the translator make his product interesting for the reader or should it be as close as possible to the original text in terms of content. The above examples of difficulties in literary translation allow to conclude that oriental literature is quite sophisticated in its presentation to the Russian reader, and yet these translations show increasing popularity.

The article studies two key novels by the Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate (1988) Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006), The Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957) and Children of Our Alley (1959), through the prism of the Muslim allusions embedded in them. They play major role in the allegorical work Children of Our Alley which is stylized as a sira (“folk novel”) and shows the life of many generations of Gabalawi’s descendants. In The Trilogy, the symbolism is hidden, but the comparison between it and the next novel of Mahfouz through the lens of Muslim allusions, primarily in names, made it possible to reveal the symbolic meaning of the novel and establish a common philosophy underlying the two works. The main source is the Qur‘an; the authors also turned to texts of classical Islamic studies and early Islamic history. Relevance: 1) drawing attention to the Cairo Trilogy, famous in Arab countries, but not translated into Russian; 2) popularizing the method of analyzing religious connotations, which is rarely used in literary studies, but is productive for understanding and translating the literature of Muslim countries in which religion plays a large social role. Conclusions: both novels present an allegory of the history of mankind which is going through radical changes in modern times. At the beginning, they show a traditional world where religion is associated with vital energy (in the first two issues of the Trilogy, the Islamic aspect of names is associated with success in society and large offspring; in Children of Our Alley, the names allowed to connect the main characters with the prophets of Islam). During the course of the plot, the order in the world of the novels is disrupted. At the end of them, the father leaves the world (in both novels, the patriarch is an allegory of God); Muslim references in names and the religious piety of the characters cease to be a defense against chaos. Religion is being replaced by scientific point of view (Kamal in the Trilogy and ‘Arafa in Children of Our Alley; their names do not have Islamic connotations). Science which is free from religious rules is not able to resist immorality and the depletion of the human race. The author’s view of the new era is pessimistic: the old model of the world is destroyed, and the new one is corrupted.