Аннотация:This paper presents an analysis of the interaction between classical Chinese poetry and its Russian translation during the long20th century through the manifold ways in which translational representations participate in relentless reinterpretation,rethinking, and re-signification. This historical instantiation of the eternal tension between “domesticating” and “foreignising”translations allows a closer look at the strategies exploited by the majority of their Russian creators. Poet-translators of theBelle Époque set the tone for producing “readable” translations oriented towards the regnant literary and cultural norms oftheir target audience. Presenting a part of the significant avant-garde trend of reinterpreting the cryptic “East”, their taste forusing Chinese imagery and poetic principles as a manifestation of cultural transfer was reinforced by translations of Chineseliterature by Russian Sinologists published most actively during the 1940s–1960s. Their task was formulated as a culturalobjective of producing a familiarised, “fluent” text based upon “the translator’s invisibility”. Their versions were addressedto a reader who acted within the framework of the national/cultural tradition, and who was forced to reckon with this tradition.Then the pendulum swung the other way, producing highly de-familiarised translations of traditional Chinese poetry bycontemporary Russian poets within a more nuanced approach that still awaits interpretation.
