ABSTRACT
This chapter is dedicated entirely to the problem of untranslatability, which Fedorov argues is a product of Western idealist philosophy. A materialist approach to language, which rejects any separation of language and thought, prevents the erroneous conflation of linguistic asymmetries, what Fedorov refers to as difficulties, with untranslatability. Fedorov then contrasts the pessimism of untranslatability with the optimistic Soviet concept of adekvatnyi or full-value translation, which he defines as rendering the distinct relationship between content and form in the original by recreating the particular features of the latter (if linguistic conditions allow) or by creating functional correspondences to those features.
