Approximating or distancing? The use of deixis, anaphora and historic presentin Russian translations of “The adventures of Tom Sawyer”

The research presented in the article focuses on the factors, which determine deictic and anaphoric shifts in Russian translated narratives. The phenomenon of systematic change of proximals ( here , now , this house ) to distals ( there , then , that house ) or vice versa, as well as omitting or adding these elements, has been explored in contemporary researches using translated texts corpora. Approximating or distancing trends have been revealed within a corpus of translations or individual translated versions. The article aims to determine the factors influencing deictic and anaphoric shifts in Russian translations of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by Mark Twain. The analysis undertaken helped to reveal the following factors: the language factor (translators may use the deictic or anaphoric shifts to avoid incorrect constructions), the stylistic factor (translators prefer the elements that are widespread within a literary tradition), the strategic factor (a translator may apply an individual strategy to highlight the author’s authentic style). In Russian translations of the novel about Tom Sawyer the approximating trend is dominating: the deictic centre of the narrative gets closer to the reader. This effect is achieved by condensing the deictic proximals, substituting past verb forms by historic present and adding anaphoric proximals in the focalized fragments. These changes intensify the author’s original approximating strategy of the focalized narrative.