TRANSLATING CHINESE TOPONYMS INTO RUSSIAN IN VIEW OF THEIR SEMANTIC AND FUNCTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

As part of the proper names system, toponyms represent a particular layer of every language that hardens the choice of strategy to translate them into foreign languages. An analysis of the ways of translating Russian toponyms into Chinese has revealed that Chinese translation rules are structured and adaptive to the semantic characteristics of individual components of toponyms. In contrast, the Russian translation practice still needs more unity in translating Chinese toponyms. Based on the results of the comparison and summary of the Chinese experience of translating Russian toponyms into Chinese, the current paper presents rules for applying semantic loaning to the translation of Chinese toponyms with regard to the cultural and semantic characteristics of individual components of toponyms. These rules contribute to structuring the translation of Chinese toponyms into Russian and uncover their semantic, geographical, natural, and cultural characteristics, thus providing speakers of the target language with the same amount of information about a place accessible to the source language speakers.