PECULARITIES OF TRANSLATION OF FRENCH DIPLOMATIC TEXTS INTO RUSSIAN (BASED ON THE SPEECHES OF THE MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS J.-I. LE DRIAN)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the French diplomatic discourse and its representation in the speeches of Jean-Yves Le Drian, an outstanding French statesman and politician who served as The Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France from May 2017 to May 2022. The paper examines theoretical aspects of diplomatic discourse, the specifics and functioning of the French diplomatic discourse, the problems of translation in the field of diplomacy. The present article analyses the constitutive features of the French diplomatic discourse represented in the texts of the speeches of the head of French diplomacy at the lexical, morphosyntactic and stylistic levels. The main characteristics of the French diplomatic text include cliched speech, a huge amount of references, an abundance of verbal nouns and special terms, euphemisation and metaphorisation of statements, rhetorical devices and the modality of obligation. In general, the texts of speeches express the politics of «soft power» and the transition from the personal to the institutional plane of expression. The paper demonstrates the results of translation of Jean-Yves Le Drian's speech into Russian and provides justification for the accepted translation strategies. The difficulties a diplomatic translator encounters in the course of his work are also pointed out and the ways to overcome them are outlined. In order to implement a general strategy of translation taking into account the preservation of the style of diplomatic communication and to solve the difficulties arising in the process of translation, it is necessary to take into account the semantics and stylistic potential of both separate linguistic units and macro-contexts.