Characters’ speech features in the novel “A long way down” by Nick Hornby and means of their translation into Russian

The article deals with the means of creating images of characters in works of fiction. Speech portrait is understood as a combination of speech characteristics of the character, features of their speech behavior, using or not using certain elements, distinguishing the character from the others. The research is based on the novel “A Long Way Down” (2005) by the contemporary British writer N. Hornby and its Russian translation by A. Stepanov (2006). The authors analyze lexical, grammatical and phonetic techniques of creating the speech portrait of characters and reveal their functions (for example, those of social or age group emblem, ethnical identification, psychological state of the character). The article examines translation strategies of rendering their speech characteristics in the Russian text.