Even historical legends recorded in Russian: practice of transcription and commenting

This article is about the practical aspects of publishing folklore samples recorded in Russian by performers for whom Russian is not their native language. The research was based on two texts of Even historical legends collected in the Momsky ulus of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) from a performer who spoke to varying degrees Even, Yakut and Russian. The author has recorded the legend on audio, and then made the complete transcription of a record. Some linguistic features of texts were studied, such as using pause filler words, deviations in stress, violation of the grammatical norm, varying pronunciation of some words, mixing of speech styles and the use of words in sublime style, with the regular absence of prepositions. The author of the transcription adheres to recommendations of V. Ya. Propp on editing folklore texts: the originality of the phonetics of the text is not transmitted (this would make it difficult to read), but all the grammatical and syntactic features of the performer’s speech remain unchanged. During transcription, texts were divided into paragraphs (blocks), numbered for ease of reading and searching for comments. The punctuation marks also were placed, as well as some illegible-sounding words and some incomprehensible fragments of texts were marked. To preserve the internal logic of texts, the additions of words have been made in square brackets in some places, with additional marks. At the end of the article, the texts of both legends are published with comments made by the author of the transcription.