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Part of
Key Cultural Texts in Translation
Edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, Adriana Şerban and Fransiska Louwagie
[Benjamins Translation Library 140] 2018
► pp. 131–149

Chapter 8
Polish dance in Eugene Onegin

What can be found in translation

This article focuses on Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel, Eugene Onegin as a key cultural text. I examine five translations into English, by Douglas Hofstadter (1999), Olivia Emmet and Svetlana Makourenkova (1999), Tom Beck (2004), Henry Hoyt (2008), and Stanley Mitchell (2008), using both paratextual and textual data related to one peculiar episode, the dance scene, part of Tatiana’s birthday party in Chapter 5, to exemplify the translators’ vision and the techniques they use to preserve the specific concepts and terms of Russian culture in their work and for sharing them with their English-speaking readers. Since these five translations have not been analysed before, my article makes a contribution to the almost two centuries worth of scholarship on Eugene Onegin in English.
Keywords: translation theory, the translator’s visibility, Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin
Article outline
  • 1.Introductory remarks
  • 2.The legacy of Eugene Onegin in English
    • 2.1The very beginning
    • 2.2Simmons’ review of the first translations of Eugene Onegin in English
    • 2.3Nabokov and Eugene Onegin
    • 2.4Leighton’s work on Eugene Onegin
    • 2.5From paper to online reviews: Murr’s evaluation of Eugene Onegin
    • 2.6Tarvi’s research on Eugene Onegin in English
  • 3.The translators’ vision of Eugene Onegin: What to bring to the reader
    • 3.1Emmet and Makourenkova: Pushkin as a Russian Shakespeare
    • 3.2Hofstadter’s study of Eugene Onegin
    • 3.3Beck’s Eugene Onegin: The importance of sounds in translating
    • 3.4Hoyt’s Eugene Onegin: An improvement on Nabokov’s translation
    • 3.5Mitchell’s Eugene Onegin: In quest of Pushkin’s style, vocabulary, rhyme and metre in English
  • 4.What can be gained in translation: The metaphor of the Polish dance in Eugene Onegin
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.140.08pon
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