The Translator's Linguistic Identity in Cross-Cultural Literary Transfer: Author–Image–Translator Triad in Uzbek–Russian and Uzbek–English Translations

Abstract

Literary translation requires negotiation not only between languages but between three distinct linguistic identities: the source author, the fictional characters or images constructed within the text, and the translator. This article proposes the Author–Image–Translator (AIT) triad as an analytical framework for studying how translators reproduce, transform, or suppress the linguistic identities encoded in source literary texts. Applying the framework to Uzbek–Russian and Uzbek–English literary translation, we demonstrate that translators' socio-cultural embeddedness, idiolectal preferences, and cognitive access to source-culture schemas are decisive factors in the preservation of the national character image across translation boundaries. We further argue that gender, ideological context, and creative competence are underexplored dimensions of translator linguistic identity that systematically shape translation output. The AIT framework offers a productive theoretical synthesis of cognitive translation studies, pragmatics, and cultural linguistics for the analysis of cross-cultural literary transfer.