Phraseology in B. Pérez Galdós’s Novel “Tristana”: Semantic and Pragmatic Losses in Translation

Abstract

The relevance of the study lies in the challenges of literary translation and the phenomenon of untranslatability in intercultural communication, as well as in the importance of B. Pérez Galdós’s oeuvre and the need for its adequate reception by Russian readers. The research aims to identify and assess strategies for rendering phraseological units in Galdós’s novel Tristana , focusing on the preservation of expressiveness, cultural connotations, and the author’s intent, as well as to determine the semantic and pragmatic losses incurred when an idiom is replaced with an equivalent, interpreted lexically, or omitted. The study applies comparative, component distributional, and contextual analysis methods alongside a classification of translation transformations. Analysis reveals three common transformation types in translation practice: substitution with an approximately equivalent expression; substitution that distorts semantic, stylistic, and pragmatic features; and omission due to untranslat ability and the impossibility of transferring the unit into another cultural and linguistic environment. These transformations cause substantial losses: they weaken the text’s cognitive density, reduce expressiveness and emotional tone, neutralise culturally specific imagery, distort the author’s intentions and subtext, diminish the figurative richness of characters’ speech, and lead to axiological shifts — all impairing the Russian reader’s perception of the novel. The findings are relevant to literary translation practice and may inform a new Russian translation of the novel. Further research may focus on the linguoculturological analysis of the phraseological worldview in 19th century Spanish fiction and on the cognitive functions of phraseology within it.