The core conceptual fi eld transfer in the German translations of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (the level of space and time)

The article is aimed at examining the features of reproducing the core sense- and plot-forming conceptual fi eld “crime/punishment” in the German translations of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment at the level of space and time. The research material consists of the most representative fragments of novel’s translations made by Wilhelm Henckel (1882), Michael Feofanoff (1908, 1922), Alexander Eliasberg (1921), Elizabeth Kaerrick (ps. E. K. Rhasin, 1953), and Svetlana Geier (1994). The article sequentially explores the nuances of the individual author’s features of the conceptual fi eld (the scale of the crisis contagion, escape, and predetermination of the end) reproduced by each of the translators. The fi ndings suggest that the reduction and losses of some concept features in early translations are due to the lack of the translators’ attention to the features of Dostoevsky’s style, which affects the degree of transmission of the axiological dominants of the novel and the images of a number of characters.