Humanities & Social Sciences 3 (2016 9) 687-694 ~ ~ ~ УДК 81.33 “Midway in our Life’s Journey, I went Astray from the Straight Road and Woke to Find Myself.”: Where has a Literary Translator Found Himself? (Translation Sketch) Irina S. Alekseeva* Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia St. Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation 3a Kazanskaya Str., Saint-Petersburg, 191186, Russia Received 20.01.2015, received in revised form 24.02.2016, accepted 05.03.2016 The article deals with the problem of changes in the appearance and functions of literary translation, as a respond to the contemporary perception and interpretation of fi ction works composing the World Culture. <...> The format of translation sketch allows the author to reason in a free from about how translators become creators of meta-linguistic markers in the target culture, concepts and traditions, i.e. those elements, which are crucially important for any culture. <...> The material and remarkable examples used in the work provide the author with an opportunity to remind the readers that skills and experience of literary translators make a vital contribution to enrich the content of the Russian culture. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: i.s.alexeeva@gmail.com # 687 # differentiation of two notions the fi rst of which is considered as a translation (interpreting) that involves bookish way of speaking, whilst literary translation means the translation of fi ction works. <...> Irina S. Alekseeva. “Midway in our Life’s Journey, I went Astray from the Straight Road and Woke to Find Myself.”… In the present time, fi ction is a type of art, and, as it seems, has left the social van. <...> I mean, not only a written word has now fallen to everyone’s share – all of us write texts – but also translation has followed the same suit – people do translate: in the Internet one can fi nd translations of almost all books. <...> Along this way, a complex and extensive representation of the source text is built. <...> In this context, fragments and certain words from the translated fi ction text serve as metasigns, markers of the culture, and by performing in this function, change importance of the source text. <...> Case 1: People associate aphoristic expressions with a certain author or sometimes even with a translator (as a rule <...>