Abstract
<jats:p>The article refers to the epic texts of Dolgan olonkho as a reflection of the cultural, linguistic, as well as ethno-identical features of Dolgans, which are the northernmost and one of the youngest Turkic ethnic groups in the modern world. Dolgan olonkho is considered as a set of ethnic texts of the indigenous small-numbered people of Siberia and Russia, which are the objects of “near” anthropology and act in the context of a comprehensive cultural turn of the sciences as objects of humanities as a whole, as well as potential objects of ethnic translation. The ethnic texts contain cultural information and memory generated throughout the entire existence of the ethnic group and reflect its the most important real and mythological past, which determines the research relevance. Culturonyms are recognized as a regular form of cultural information and memory verbalization, which in relation to translating culture turns out to be xenonyms and act as the main units of ethnic translation, which implies the obligatory and most complete reconstruction of “foreign” cultural information in translated texts. The novelty of the study is determined by the consideration of Dolgan epic texts in the context of ethnic translation – a multifunctional intercultural communicative activity that performs culture preservation, research, language revitalization, educational, pedagogical, and identity constructing tasks, as well as provides access to representatives of other world cultures and researchers to the unique culture of the Russian North. The purpose of the study was to analyze the existing experience of translating the Yakut olonkho, created by the closely related to Dolgans Sakha ethnic group, in light of the possibility of using it as a “translation benchmarking” tool (as one of the best examples of translation of a Turkic-language epic), which allows for the application of basic strategies, principles, and techniques of translation of ethnic texts that have already proven their effectiveness in Yakut Translation Studies. The ethnic translation approach to the texts of the Dolgan olonkho is based on the general scientific methodological principle of complementarity, which involves the combined use of methods and ideas from Cultural Studies, Folklore Studies, Linguistics, and Translation Studies, as well as the principles of Hermeneutics, which are used descriptively and prescriptively. The theoretical and practical significance of the analysis suggests the possibility of using its results to create general and particular theories of ethnic translation, understood as “near” Translation Studies, as well as to develop academic courses on Epic Studies, Siberian Studies, Cross-cultural Communication, Ethnic Linguistics and other sections of modern humanities.</jats:p>