Influence of polygenre nature on translation of memoirs

The article investigates the challenges encountered in translating texts characterized by genre heterogeneity. The hypothesis is that the theoretical description of the polygenre phenomenon proposed by literary scholars can serve as a valuable tool for translation analysis of the source text to achieve the highest possible level of equivalence. The study aims to examine such a translation situation within the English-Russian language pair and to conduct a comparative analysis to identify genre patterns in the source text that may lead to translation errors. The material for the analysis was derived from T. E. Lawrence’s memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom and its Russian translation. Excerpts containing translation errors were selected through continuous sampling. A linguistic and translational evaluation was performed on these fragments, and alternative translations that better adhere to the principle of translation adequacy were proposed. The fi ndings suggest that delineating genre boundaries between different segments of the same text enhances translation quality. Additionally, in the process of translation, it is important to understand the communicative tasks that the author aims to fulfi ll by using specifi c genre forms.