RUSSIA IN BRAZIL: AN INTERCULTURAL FOCUS (TRANSLATION EXPERIENCE)

There is increased attention to Russia and, in particular, to the Russian literature and culture in the recent years in Brazil due to closer contacts and cooperation between the two countries. This interest is manifested in various aspects: first, Russian literature and culture attracts more attention in the university academic environment (both the number of students who choose to study Russian, history, literature and culture, and the number of scientific studies are increasing; Universities in Brazil are organizing more and more academic events focusing on different aspects of Russian history and culture), and second, there is an increased attention of the wide audience. The purpose of this article is to define the contemporary perception of Brazilian literature by Brazilians and to trace the evolution of this perception. Brazilian readers are familiar with Russian writers since the end of the XIX century (when translations of the Russian classics novels by F. Dostoyevsky and L. Tolstoy entered the country), but until the middle of the 20th century the list of Russian authors and works known to the Brazilian public was pretty limited. Limitations were related partly to the quality of translations - right up to the middle of the 20th century, the translation of Russian authors works was made not directly from the Russian language, but through intermediary languages, which led to even more semantic and stylistic distortions in the re-translated text. The School of Russian Studies originated in Brazil in the 1960s at the University of Sao Paulo and is associated with the name of the translator B. Shnaiderman, who introduced the first translations of literary texts directly from the Russian language to Brazilian readers. In the past two decades a new round of interest in Russian literature has been observed and the number of translations of Russian authors from different eras into Portuguese is increasing. Along with the number of translations made, the growth of translation quality is being reported. In this article, we will briefly review the history of interaction of two cultures through the lens of the Brazilian school of Russian studies and translation development