RODION RASKOLNIKOV’S IDEA IN VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION

The article discusses the translation into Vietnamese of excerpts about the protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov’s idea in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel «Crime and Punishment». We used all available Vietnamese translations of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, adapted of the original language. We have done a comparative analysis of translations of the verbal conceptualisation of Rodion Raskolnikov’s ideas and their reverse translations accompanied by their analysis. What is worth drawing attention to, are the depressing poverty of Raskolnikov, his social protest as the main motives which made the hero to pass to the terrible crime. There is weakened interest in the hero’s idea, in its hidden godless character of Raskolnikov’s ideas – the protagonist challenges not only the outrageous social injustice, but also the foundations of Orthodoxy, according to which the Law of moral goodness comes from God rather than from humans. It has been shown that Vietnamese translators, working on the translations of «Crime and Punishment», have experienced several diffi culties. The main one is their lack of understanding and knowledge of the realia from Russian people’s daily religious and cultural life in the mid-19th century. The realities of everyday life and spiritual Orthodoxy are often replaced by the realities of the Buddhist cult, which brings to the novel an unusual «oriental» religious fl avour. Some specifi c clarifi cations are suggested for unclear content in the available translations.