Publications
Publication details [#57163]
Maslenova, Anna. 2022. Natalie Duddington’s religious translations from Russian: faith in translation. In Serban, Adriana and Rim Hassen, eds. Women translators of religious texts. Special issue of Parallèles 34 (1): 118–129.
Publication type
Article in Special issue
Publication language
English
Keywords
Source language
Target language
Person as a subject
Abstract
This article examines translations of religious texts from Russian into English by Natalie Duddington (1886-1972), better known as an assistant to the prolific translator Constance Garnett. The author considers ‘religious’ to refer to both spiritual and scriptural texts, given the overlap between religious and secular values in Russian culture. She explores Duddington’s career as a translator from the perspective of her traditionally female habitus (Simeoni, 1998) which dictates Duddington’s “invisibility” (Venuti, 2008). The author argues, however, that invisibility is not necessarily imposed on a female translator by the rules of the cultural field in which she operates. Instead, Maslenova analyses Duddington’s translatorial hexis (Charlston, 2013) to show that, somewhat counter-intuitively, a translator can choose voluntarily to relinquish her own voice in the process of intercultural mediation, to further her perceived higher spiritual purposes. Duddington contributed to the British cultural field as a translator of Russian religious philosophy and literature, and as an author of her own philosophical works. Through these activities, she did not seek a more privileged position in society or to receive great personal gain. On the contrary, her main objective was to bring British and Russian people closer through shared spiritual wisdom.
Source : Based on abstract in journal