Culturemes in the translation of the Russian and Bulgarian versions of the animated film Coco

Abstract

The article addresses the problem of translating culturemes based on a comparative analysis of translation techniques used in the Russian and Bulgarian versions of the animated film Coco, juxtaposed with the original soundtrack. It discusses numerous insertions in Spanish in the English version of the production, as well as the definitions of  phenomena specific to Mesoamerican culture and the ways
of transferring them to Russian and Bulgarian, taking into account the degree to which the actualities of Mexican culture were conveyed in translation. The culturemes excerpted from the film can be divided into several semantic groups: terms related to the celebration of Día de los muertos, Mexican Day of the Dead, honorifics, names of dishes and groceries, mythical creatures and legendary figures, names of family members and toasts. They can be also divided according to their structure: the ones being described with a single word and others worded with an entire phrase in Spanish. Some of them were transferred to the Russian and Bulgarian translations in their original form, especially the addressee expressions, although this procedure was carried out much more frequently in the Bulgarian version of the film. In the Russian version, they would rather be replaced with a native equivalent, which, however, did not always fully reflect the original
meaning and the role of the discussed element in its original culture. Sometimes a phrase in Spanish in the process of translation was replaced by another phrase in
Spanish, apparently more familiar to the viewer. In order to examine the extent to which the translation solutions used conveyed the cultural meaning of the terms appearing in the film, the collected material was compared with dictionary and corpus data and then compiled in the form of tables. Comments to the tables were preparedon the basis of the field literature.