Cover not available
Article published In:
Contexts of Russian Literary Translation
Edited by Julie Hansen and Susanna Witt
[Translation and Interpreting Studies 11:1] 2016
► pp. 23–43

Byron’s Don Juan in Russian and the ‘Soviet school of translation’

Acknowledging the significance of context and of translators as agents, this article is concerned with the establishment of ‘translational facts’ (Toury 1995) and its relation to canon formation in Russian culture of the Soviet period. The translational facts examined are the two complete renditions of Byron’s Don Juan to appear during the Soviet era: Georgii Shengeli’s version from 1947 and Tatiana Gnedich’s from 1959. The context in which they are considered is the development of the so-called Soviet school of translation as a concept, a process which roughly coincided with the intervening period. Drawing on Russian archival sources, the study offers a reconsideration of the ‘Soviet school of translation’ from perspectives beyond its own self-understanding and official status and looks at it as a construct with a complex history of its own. The analysis shows how translational facts may become signs in the target culture and how this, in the case of Byron, affected the formation of the Soviet translational canon.

Keywords: Byron, canon formation, Gnedich, translation history, translational fact, Soviet school of translation, Russia, Shengeli
Published online: 31 March 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.11.1.02wit
References
Adler, Nancy
1999 “Life in the Big Zone: The Fate of Returnees in the Aftermath of Stalinism.” Europe-Asia Studies 51 (1): 5–9. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Azov, Andrei
2013 Poverzhennye bukvalisty. Iz istorii khudozhestvennogo perevoda v SSSR v 1920–1960-e gody. Moscow: Vysshaia shkola ekonomiki.Google Scholar
Antokol’skii, Pavel, Mukhtar Auezov, and Maksym Ryl’skii
1955 “Khudozhestvennye perevody literatur narodov SSSR.” In Voprosy khudozhestvennogo perevoda, ed. by Vladimir Rossel’s, 5–44. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’.Google Scholar
Baer, Brian James
2010 “Literary Translation and the Construction of a Soviet Intelligentsia.” In Translation, Resistance, Activism, ed. by Maria Tymoczko, 149–167. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Balliu, Christian
2005 “Clefs pour une histoire de la traductologie soviétique.” Meta 50 (3): 934–948. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bairon, Dzh
1940 Sobranie poem. Trans. by G.A. Shengeli. Introductory article by Zabludovskii. Moscow: GIKhLGoogle Scholar
1947 Don-Zhuan. Trans. by Georgii Shengeli. Moscow: GIKhL.Google Scholar
1959 Don-Zhuan. Trans. by Tatiana Gnedich. Moscow–Leningrad: GIKhL.Google Scholar
Byron, Lord
1982 Don Juan, ed. by G. Stefan, E. Stefan, and W.W. Pratt. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Chukovskii, Kornei
1964 Vysokoe iskusstvo. O printsipakh khudozhestvennogo perevoda. Moscow: Iskusstvo (English edition: Chukovskii, Kornei. 1984. The Art of Translation: Kornei Chukovskii’s “A High Art.” Trans. and ed. by Lauren G. Leighton. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennesee Press).Google Scholar
Clark, Katerina
2011 Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Katerina, and Evgeny Dobrenko
2007 Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917–1953. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Etkind, Efim
1963 Poeziia i perevod. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’.Google Scholar
2011 “Pobeda dukha.” In Gnedich 20111: 25–36.Google Scholar
Friedberg, Maurice
1997 Literary Translation in Russia: A Cultural History. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fedorov, Andrei
1968 Osnovy istorii perevoda. Moscow: Vysshaia shkola.Google Scholar
Gerovitch, Slava
2011 “’Why Are We Telling Lies?’ The Creation of Soviet Space History Myths.” Russian Review 701 (July): 460–484. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gnedich, Tatiana
2011 Dzh. G. Bairon. Don-Zhuan (Korifei khudozhestvennogo perevoda. Peterburgskaia shkola 2), ed. by O.R. Demidova. St. Petersburg: Petropolis.Google Scholar
2008 Stranitsy plena i stranitsy slavy. St. Petersburg: Genio loci.Google Scholar
Kashkin, Ivan
1934 “’Smert’ posle poludnia.’ (Kheminguei).” Literaturnyi kritik 91: 121–148.Google Scholar
1951 “O iazyke perevoda.” Literaturnaia gazeta 11 (December): 2.Google Scholar
1952a “Udachi, neudachi i poluudachi.” Novyj mir 21 (review of Bairon. 1951. Izbrannoe. M–L: Detgiz).Google Scholar
1952b “Traditsiia i epigonstvo.” Novyi mir 121 (revised version in Kashkin 1977: 404–426).Google Scholar
1952c “Lozhnyi printsip i nepriemlemye rezul’taty.” Inostrannye iazyki v shkole 21 (revised version in Kashkin 1977).Google Scholar
1954 “O realizme v sovetskom khudozhestvennom perevode.” Druzhba narodov 41.Google Scholar
1955 “V bor’be za realisticheskii perevod.” In Voprosy khudozhestvennogo perevoda, ed. by Vl. Rossel’s, 120–164. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’.Google Scholar
1977 Dlia chitatelia sovremennika —stat’i i issledovaniia, ed. by M. Lorie and P. Toper. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’ (first edition 1968).Google Scholar
Kostyrchenko, Evgenii
2009 Stalin protiv “kosmopolitov”: Vlast’ i evreiskaia intelligentiia v SSSR. Moscow: Rosspen.Google Scholar
Leighton, Lauren G
1991 Two Worlds, One Art: Literary Translation in Russia and America. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Levitt, Marcus
1989 Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levontin, Ezra
1948 “Dzhordzh Bairon. Don Zhuan. Perevod, posleslovie i primechaniia Georgiia Shengeli. M. Goslitizdat. 1947” (review article). Sovetskaia kniga 31: 106–111.Google Scholar
Merkle, Denise
2008 “Translation Constraints and the ‘Sociological Turn’ in Literary Translation Studies.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury, ed. by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni, 175–186. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perel’muter, Vadim
1997 “Zhivushchii na maiake.” In Georgii Shengeli, Inokhodets. Sobranie stikhov. Vizantiiskaia povest’ “Povar bazilevsa.” Literaturnye vospominaiia. Stat’i, ed. by Vadim Perel’muter, 14–40. Moscow: Sovpadenie.Google Scholar
2011 “Istoriia odnogo donosa.” Toronto Slavic Quarterly 361, Spring 2011: 119–125. [URL] (accessed 24 October 2013).Google Scholar
Satyr, T
1964 “Odin listok perevoda.” Vechernii Leningrad 121.Google Scholar
Shengeli, Georgii
1923 Traktat o russkom stikhe (2nd ed.). Moscow–Petrograd: Gosizdat.Google Scholar
1940 Tekhnika stikha. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’.Google Scholar
Terras, Victor
1991 A History of Russian Literature. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon
1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tynianov, Iurii
2000 [1924] “The Literary Fact.” Trans. by Ann Shukman. In Modern Genre Theory, ed. by David Duff, 29–49. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Usova, Galina
1993 “Podvig.” In Raspiatie (Pisateli—zhertvy politicheskikh repressii, kn. 1), 155–167. St. Petersburg: Severo-zapad.Google Scholar
Witt, Susanna
2010 “ ‘Mycket dåligt kan man finna bland de brister som karaktäriserar översättning’: En diskussion på det sovjetiska författarförbundet 11 februari och 4 mars 1953” [“One can find a lot of bad things among the defects which characterize translation”: A Discussion at the Soviet Writers’ Union 11 February and 4 March, 1953]. Paper presented at the symposium Totalitarian and Post-Totalitarian Language, Stockholm University, 15 October 2010 (ms).
2013 “Arts of Accommodation: The First All-Union Conference of Translators, Moscow, 1936, and the Ideologization of Norms.” In The Art of Accommodation: Literary Translation in Russia, ed. by Leon Burnett and Emily Lygo, 141–184. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
2016. “Translation and Intertextuality in the Soviet-Russian Context: Georgii Shengeli’s Don Juan .” Slavic and East European Journal 60(1).
Zhirmunskii, Viktor
1924 Bairon i Pushkin. Iz istorii romanticheskoi poemy. Leningrad: Academia.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Chernetsky, Vitaly
2022. A Battle for Translation. In Translation Under Communism, ► pp. 411 ff. DOI logo
Witt, Susanna
2021. Made under pressure: literary translation in the Soviet Union, 1960–1991. The Translator 27:2 ► pp. 241 ff. DOI logo
Witt, Susanna
2022. Translating Inferno: Mikhail Lozinskii, Dante and the Soviet Myth of the Translator. In Translation Under Communism, ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.