Means of expression of approximate quantity in N. V. Gogol's "Dead souls" and its Chinese translation

This article is dedicated to the expression of the approximate quantity in the N. V. Gogol’s poem «Dead Souls» and its translation into Chinese. Approximate quantity combines the properties of indefinite and definite quantity. On the one hand, it quantifies definite «reference points»; on the other hand, it enters into a narrow area within these points - a neighborhood. Two linguistic patterns of expression of approximate quantity are in Russian and Chinese: with one or two “reference points”. The first pattern is presented in three variants: 1) with the lower neighborhood; 2) with the upper neighborhood; 3) with the lower and the upper neighborhoods. In the process of comparing the expression approximate number it was found that in the Russian language there are many ways to express approximate number. The means of expression are among them that have equivalent Chinese means, but there are tools that are not available in the Chinese language, for example, the inversion of a numeral and a noun, for example: Minuty dve ‘about two minutes’ dlilos’ molchaniye ‘Silence lasted about two minutes’. In many cases, the Chinese translator has found a means of expressing equivalent or corresponding to tools used in the poem, for example:...Est’ li u vas vremya, chtoby zaekhat’ v odnu derevnyu, otsyuda verst desyat’? ‘Do you have any time to drive into a village, ten miles from here?’ 您 有 时间 陪 我 到 一个 村子 去 一趟 吗, 离 这儿 十 来 俄 里 (literally: ‘10 + 来 (about) + mile’) 远 ? In other cases, the translator do not only use non-equivalent model, but also distorted the meaning of the original, for example: Chelovek dvadtsat’, po poyas, po plecha i po gorlo v vode, tyanuli k suprotivnomu beregu nevod ‘About twenty people, weist-deep and neck-deep in water, were pulling a seine toward the opposite bank’ 水里 有 二十 多 个人 (‘twenty + 多 (more) + + people’), 有的 没 到 腰, 有的 没 到 肩膀, 有的 没 到 脖子, 在 向 对岸 拉 鱼网; The combination of the properties of indefinite and definite quantity in the approximate quantity semantics allows translators of «Dead Souls» to translate the approximate number, already devoid of precision, by using dissimilar pattern of expression or by determining a different reference point, or to translate inaccurately the quantitative value of the original. This type of error in translating is explained with the very nature of approximate number: a fixed reference point allows in any case maintaining the most common quantitative value, necessary for understanding the meaning of the text and the uncertainty zone allows the interpreter to be inaccurate.