Аңдатпа
Zhusipbek Aimauytuly is a prominent representative of Kazakh literature and one of the founders of the professional school of literary translation in Kazakhstan. His translation activities were aimed at raising the spiritual and intellectual level of Kazakh society and expanding the scope of national prose and drama. This study analyzes the artistic features of Dameli, a work preserved in the rare collection of translations by Zhusipbek Aimauytuly, one of the first representatives of the Alash intelligentsia to engage actively in literary translation. The work is among the lesser-known translations that have gradually fallen out of scholarly and literary circulation. Aimauytuly produced nearly thirty translations, many of whose original texts have not been located, while others have received limited scholarly attention. Therefore, his translation from French has recently been reconsidered as an important example of early twentieth-century literary translation. This article examines Aimauytuly’s translation, produced in 1928, through a comparative analysis with the original text, focusing on the processes of adaptation, abridgement, and cultural transfer in literary translation. The primary research materials comprise the relevant edition of the original work and the Kazakh translation published in 1928. The two texts are comparatively analyzed in terms of their compositional structure, plot development, character system, and cultural and linguistic units. The study identifies several principal translation strategies, including textual abridgement, content restructuring, cultural adaptation, explicitation, and adjustment to the target reader’s expectations. While retaining selected artistic and cultural elements of the original, the translator shortened certain episodes and descriptions and brought them closer to the literary and cultural context of the Kazakh readership. From this perspective, the 1928 translation can be understood not merely as a linguistic transformation but also as a process of transferring the source text into a new literary and cultural environment. The findings contribute to a broader understanding of Aimauytuly’s translation practice within the history of literary translation, adaptation, and cultural transfer in Kazakh literature.