Paremiological collection "So said the wise men" in the historical and cultural context of Kabardino-Balkarian folklore studies
The paper presents a multiaspect analysis of the paremiological collection «So said the wise men», which was published in 1965 in Nalchik. The collection can be considered unique for several objective reasons. Its content is made up of typologically similar Kabardin and Balkar proverbs and sayings, once provided to publishers by the archival service of the Kabardino-Balkarian Research Institute. All paremiological units (821) were translated into Russian by one of the most talented representatives of the Soviet translation school, Naum Grebnev. The preface to the collection was written by Kaisyn Kuliev, who called the world of folk aphorisms the best school for poets. The content-axiological analysis carried out by the author of the article made it possible to identify a list of proverbs and sayings grouped around 5 nuclear concepts «reason», «speech culture», «good neighborliness», «hospitality», «measure». These concepts are ethnocultural constants of oral folk art of the peoples of the North Caucasus. As the study shows, N. Grebnev, on the whole, managed to convey the national flavor of the Kabardino-Balkarian proverbs. The stylistic features of his translation practice are the compression of meanings, the syntactic deployment of microtext, as well as the use of emotional intensifiers in the form of metaphors, epithets, hyperbole, comparisons, and rhetorical questions.