Russian translation of Chinese garden vocabulary from the point of view of equivalency (based on the Russian translation of the 17th chapter of the novel “A dream of red mansion”)

The chapter 17 of “Dream of Red Mansions” is used as the corpus to explore the Russian translation method of Chinese garden vocabulary. The study of the vocabulary of the source text and the target text, as well as the issue of the original meaning makes the author turn to the methods of literary studies, aesthetics of perception, and cognitive linguistics. The Chinese concept of unity between Nature and Man is particularly evident in garden architecture. The construction of Chinese landscape architectural complex follows the principle of “man-made is comparable with the natural”. The overall description of the grand view garden has been officially presented to the readers for the first time in the 17th chapter of “Dream of Red Mansions”. The Grand View Garden embodies China’s long-established art of gardening, especially its landscape, architecture, flora and fauna, and other elements that reflect the uniqueness of Chinese garden culture. “Dream of Red Mansions” has been translated into over 60 versions in 20 kinds of languages, there are 12 complete versions of translation, the rest being only partially translated. V.A. Panasiuk, the author of the unabridged translation of this work, has demonstrated the traditional Chinese culture embodied in the “Dream of Red Mansions”, a fact which makes the version worth studying. Through the context of aesthetics of perception, the author comes to the following conclusion: Chinese garden vocabulary can be translated into Russian by such three methods as literal translation in case of complete equivalence, word-by-word translation in case of partial equivalence, descriptive translation/substitution in case of non-equivalence.