1 - Translation and Translators in the Soviet Union
from Part I - Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2017
Summary
In the opening paragraphs of his landmark study of translation, the celebrated children's writer and translator Kornei Chukovskii described translation in the early years of Soviet rule as follows:
Never before in our country has the art of literary translation blossomed as it does now. There has been no other period in the entire history of Russian literature when there existed such a Pleiad of talented writers using their talent for translations. There were the geniuses, Zhukovskii and Pushkin, but they were giants among Lilliputians. They rose alone above a crowd of the unskilled and weak – they were individuals who knew no equals. And now the sheer number of magnificent artists of the word who have dedicated themselves to this difficult work demonstrates that something unprecedented has happened. Yes, it has never truly happened until now that so many talents have worked shoulder to shoulder and simultaneously in the space of a single decade on translation.
It is certainly true that literary translation, into Russian and the other languages of the national republics, was ‘central to the Soviet project from the beginning’. The extent of the Soviet translation endeavour can be demonstrated by the range of new outlets for publication – journals, books, series and dedicated publishing houses – and by the growing number of works published in translation. The official promotion of translation – critics and scholars proudly pointed to print runs in the millions as proof that it held a particularly special place in Soviet society – was mirrored by a genuine passion for foreign literature among readers. For the so-called ‘best-read country in the world’, the publication and consumption of foreign literature was not only a matter of pride, but also a marker of cultural sophistication; translated literature was a crucial part of the ‘world culture’ of which the Soviet intelligentsia felt itself to be a part. For the many readers who were unable to travel beyond their own borders or meet foreigners, translation also had an especially potent appeal as a ‘window onto a semi-forbidden world’. For the cultural authorities, foreign literature could enrich Soviet culture and teach Soviet citizens about the world outside its borders; nonetheless, the consumption of imported cultural products could provoke a sense that Soviet cultural actors ‘looked to the West but were also repelled by it’.
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- Discourses of Regulation and ResistanceCensoring Translation in the the Stalin and Khrushchev Soviet Era, pp. 17 - 44Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015