Translating Dutch modal particles ‘wel’ and ‘maar’ into Russian

Abstract

The article considers ways of transferring the meaning of Dutch modal particles in Russian text. Modal particles in Dutch act as communicative markers that are specific to Dutch culture. In contrast to the popular opinion, that in translating modal particles the method of omission prevails, this article examines the lexical, grammatical, and syntactic methods for preserving the modal meaning of the Dutch text in Russian translations, using examples from fiction. In addition, the question of translatability of poetic texts is touched upon. Following N. M. Azarova and S. Y. Bochaver, the author accepts the thesis of the translatability of the poetic text. Modern poetry, however, has its own specific features, such as brevity, the importance of graphic appearance of the text, and discreteness of the statement. Within strict limits of the growing importance of visual culture in the modern world, Dutch poets practically refuse “superfluous” words, including modal particles, which are extremely rare in poetry. This observation has a great value, because in today’s world of computer technology, the zero is as important as the one.