Prefaces in Soviet translations of Robert Burns’s poetry as ideological tools
Abstract
This article focuses on the ideological content and function of the prefaces that accompany the translations of foreign literature made in the Soviet Union. The aim of the article is to demonstrate how these translations use paratexts to comply with the target system’s ideological constraints. It shows how the ways in which the Soviet authorities used paratexts to manipulate representations of the author of the source text and the text itself reflect the power structures within the target system. The empirical investigation draws on a close lexical analysis of ideologemes in two prefaces that accompanied Soviet translations of Robert Burns’s poetry.
Keywords:
Publication history
Table of contents
According to Lefevere (1992, 13), a translation is “an act carried out under the influence of particular categories and norms constituent to systems in a society. The most important of these are patronage, ideology, poetics, and ‘the universe of discourse’.” Thus, translation is considered to be an act of rewriting an original text to serve a certain purpose, which is determined by the cultural constraints of the receiving culture (Lefevere 1992). Similarly, Toury (1995, 29) defines translations as “facts of a target culture,” and explains that
References
Bednarczyk, Anna
2014 “Политические контексты переводческой деятельности (перевод переводчик политика в польском и русском социокультурном пространстве) [Political contexts of translation activities (translation, translator, politics in Polish and Russian sociocultural discourse].” Zagadnienia Rodzajow Literchich LVII/1: 254–271.
De-you, Yang
1987 “On Marshak’s Russian Translation of Robert Burns.” Studies in Scottish Literature 22 (1): 10–29.
Dimitriu, Rodica
2009 “Translators’ Prefaces as Documentary Sources for Translation Studies.” Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 17 (3): 193–206. 
Genette, Gerard
1997 Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. [orig. Seuils]. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gil-Bajardí, Anna, Pilar Orero, and Sara Rovira-Esteva
eds. 2012 Translation Peripheries: Paratextual Elements in Translation. Bern: Peter Lang.
Goryaeva Tatiana
2009 Политическая цензура в СССР. 1917–1991 гг [Political censorship in the USSR. 1917–1991]. ROSSPEN: Moscow.
Gusejnov, Gasan
2004 D.S.P. Советские Идеологемы в Русском Дискурсе 1990-х [Soviet ideologemes in Russian discourse of the 1990s]. Moscow: Tri kvadrata.
Haroon, Haslina
2017 “The Translator’s Preface as a Paratextual Device in Malay–English Literary Translations.” Translation & Interpreting 9 (2): 100–113.
Harvey, Keith
2003 “ ‘Events’ and ‘Horizons’: Reading Ideology in the ‘Bindings’ of Translations.” In Apropos of Ideology: Translation Studies on Ideology – Ideologies in Translation Studies, edited by María Calzada-Pérez, 43–70. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Kaloh Vid, Natalia
2007 “Use of Domesticated and Foreignized Methods in the Soviet School of Translation.” Elope 1 (2): 151–159.
2011a “Robert Burns’s ‘The Twa Dogs’: Ideological Aspects of Translation into Russian.” Scottish Literary Review 3 (1): 1–20.
2011b Ideological Translation of Robert Burns’s Poetry in Russia and in the Soviet Union. Slovenia: Mednarodna založba Oddelka za slovanske jezike in književnosti: Filozofska fakulteta.
2014a “Translating Love and the Erotic in the Soviet Union: The Case of Robert Burns’s Poetry.” In Forces of the Erotic: Past and Present Transgressions, Transformations and Bliss, edited by Doreen Bauschke and Dena Gilby, 133–149. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
2014b “The Reception of Robert Burns in Russia.” In The Reception of Robert Burns in Europe, edited by Murray Pittock, 155–178. London: Bloomsbury.
2015a “Translations of Robert Burns in the Soviet Union: What is Hidden Between the Lines?” In Preklad a kultúra 5. 1, edited by Edita Gromová and Mária Kusá, 59–69. Nitra: Univerzita Konštanina Filzofa v Nitre/Filozoficka fakula.
2015b “A Comrade or a Mistress? Translations of Robert Burns’s Erotic Poetry in the Soviet Union.” In PanEroticism, edited by Ben Ambler, Ana Došen, and Kristina Kočan, 13–20. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
2017 “Translations of Robert Burns’ Poetry in the Soviet Union: Ideological Aspects.” In Translation, the Canon and its Discontent: Version and Subversion, edited by Miguel Ramalhete Gomes, 93–109. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
2018 “Translations of Robert Burns in the Russian Book Market: The Old and the New.” Studies in Scottish Literature 44 (1): 13–20.
2019 “Role of Paratexts in Mediating Ideologically Adapted Translations in the Soviet Union: The Case of Robert Burns.” Belgrade English Language & Literature Studies 11: 247–265.
Kaloh Vid, Natalia, and Koletnik, Mihaela
2020 “Dialect in Poetic Translations: The Case of Robert Burns’ Poetry in Russia and in Slovenia.” Slavia Centralis 13 (1): 7–21.
Kamovnikova, Natalia
2019 Made Under Pressure: Literary Translation in the Soviet Union, 1960–1991. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press.
Kovala, Urpo
1996 “Translations, Paratextual Mediation, and Ideological Closure.” Target 8 (1): 119–147.
Kupina, Nadezhda
2000 “Языковое строительство: от системы идеологем к системе культурем. [The language construction: From the system of ideologeme to the system of cultureme].” Русский язык сегодня [Russian language today] 1: 182–189.
Lefevere, André
1992 Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge.
1998 “Translation Practice(s) and the Circulation of Cultural Capital: Some Aeneids in English.” In Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation Topics in Translation, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere, 41–56. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Lenin, Vladimir
1967 Полное собрание сочинений [The collected works]. Ed. 5. T.10. Moscow: Izdateljstvo politicheskoj literatury.
Lylo, Taras
2017 “Ideologeme as a Representative of the Basic Concepts of Ideology in the Media Discourse.” Social Communication (3) 1: 14–20.
Malysheva, Elena G.
2019 “Ideologeme as Lingo-Cognitive Phenomenon: Definition and Classification.” Translated by I. S. Pirozhkova. Political Linguistics 1 (73): 134–144.
Maclean, Marie
1991 “Pretexts and Paratexts: The Art of the Peripheral.” New Literary History (22) 2: 273–279.
Manning, Scott
2021 “Battle of Bannockburn.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed October 12, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Bannockburn.
McRae, Ellen
2012 “The Role of Translators’ Prefaces to Contemporary Literary Translations into English: An Empirical Study.” In Anna Gil-Bajardí, Pilar Orero, and Sara Rovira-Esteva (2012, 63–82).
Morozov, Aleksander
1947 “Предисловие [Preface].” In Роберт Бернс в переводах С. Маршака. Избранное [Robert Burns in S. Marshak’s translations. Selected], by Robert Burns, translated by Samuil Marshak, iii–x. Moscow: Goslitizdat.
1976 “Комментарии [Comments].” In Роберт Бернс. Стихи [Robert Burns. Poems], by Robert Burns, translated by Samuil Marshak, 366–374. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura.
Nahimova Elena
2011 “Идеологемы ‘Сталин’ в современной массовой коммуникации [Ideologemes of Stalin in contemporary mass communication].” Politicheskaya lingvistika 2 (36): 152–156.
Norberg, Ulf
2012 “Literary Translators’ Comments on Their Translations in Prefaces and Afterwords: The Case of Contemporary Sweden.” In Anna Gil-Bajardí, Pilar Orero, and Sara Rovira-Esteva (2012, 101–116).
Pellatt, Valerie
ed. 2013 Text, Extratext, Metatext and Paratext in Translation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Pingping, Hou
2013 “Paratexts in the English Translation of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
.” In Text, Extratext, Metatext and Paratext in Translation, edited by Valeria Pellatt, 33–49. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Riera, Jorge Braga
2018 “The Role of Epitexts in Drama Translation.” In Taking Stock and Audiovisual Translation, edited by Juan José Martinez Sierra, special issue of JoSTrans 30: 249–268.
Rolf, Malte
2009 “A Hall of Mirrors: Sovietizing Culture Under Stalinism.” Slavic Review 68 (3): 601–630.
Sherry, Samantha
2012 Censorship in Translation in the Soviet Union in the Stalin and Khrushchev Eras. PhD diss. University of Edinburgh.
Stratford, Madeleine, and Louis Jolicoeur
2014 “La littérature québécoise traduite au Mexique : Trois anthologies à la Foire internationale du livre de Guadalajara [Quebec literature translated in Mexico: Three anthologies at the Guadalajara International Book Fair].” Meta
59
(1): 97–123.
Tahir-Gürçağlar, Şehnaz
2002 “What Texts Don’t Tell: The Uses of Paratexts in Translation Research.” In Crosscultural Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II: Historical and Ideological Issues, edited by Theo Hermans, 44–60. Manchester: St. Jerome.
2013 “The Nature and Functions of Allographic Prefaces in Translated Works: An Initial Exploration of the Turkish Context.” In Authorial and Editorial Voices in Translation 2: Editorial and Publishing Practice, edited by Hanne Jansen and Anna Wegener, 89–108. Montréal: Éditions québécoises de l’œuvre.
Tamba, Andreea-Mihaela
2013 “Translating vs. Rewriting During the Romanian Communist Period – Prefaces to Translations of Vanity Fair and Tess of the d’Urbervilles
.” Philologica Jassyensia 2 (18): 261–270.
Toury, Gideon
1995 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Tvardovsky, Aleksander
1976 “Предисловие [Preface].” In Роберт Бернс в переводах Самуила Маршака [Robert Burns in translations by Samuil Marshak], by Robert Burns, translated by Samuil Marshak, 20–25. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura.
Watts, Richard
2000 “Translating Culture: Reading the Paratexts to Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal
.” TTR 13 (2): 29–45.
Yosé Yuste, Frías
2012 “Paratextual Elements in Translation: Paratranslating Titles in Children’s Literature.” In Anna Gil-Bajardí, Pilar Orero, and Sara Rovira-Esteva (2012, 117–134).