2020 Spring Slavfile

SlavFile Spring 2020 Vol. 29, No. 2 NEWSLETTER OF THE SLAVIC LANGUAGES DIVISION www.ata-divisions.org/SLD/ Literary Translation: A Hierarchy of Conflicting Demands Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler Cards on the table—I have consciously semantic content a linguist might find decided that I work for the readers who when analyzing it abstractly. buy my translations, not the authors who What actually happens in a translator’s write the original texts. Describing brain between reading a sentence in the translation in terms of two poles, original text and writing a sentence in Schleiermacher wrote that “either the English? All too often, attempts to answer translator leaves the writer in peace as that question (my own included) are so much as possible and moves the reader vague and so focused on simple work toward him; or he leaves the reader in habits that they recall Housman’s advice peace as much as possible and moves the on how to find inspiration for a poem— writer toward him” (this is Susan have a pint and go for a walk—which most Bernofsky’s translation). I am firmly in poets would agree is excellent advice, but the second camp. My praxis is guided by which gets us no closer to what happens the classic parable of Nabokov’s translation of Alice in under the hood. Since the ideal translation would do Wonderland, which gives the reader the same playful, everything that the original does, in exactly the way pleasurable experience as the original due to success- the original does it, without adding or distorting ful cultural adaptations, and his nigh-unusable anything, every worthwhile thing the original text Eugene Onegin, which doggedly reproduces the actual achieves adds a separate stipulation for what the grammar and structure of Pushkin’s Russian. The translator’s work must achieve. Since these stipula- approach to translation I advocate for here is built tions often contradict one another or enter the terri- around emulating the young Nabokov working for his tory in which the source language itself differs from reader rather than the old Nabokov working misguid- the target language, literary translation is an exercise edly for his author. The ultimate goal is to give the in compromise. James Merrill’s poem Lost in reader of a translation the same experience a reader of Translation is a heartbreakingly accurate depiction of the original text would have, not to replicate all of the this process: In this issue: Steven McGrath CONFERENCE PRESENTATION REVIEWS Interview with Literary Translator Carol Apollonio............5 Julia LaVilla-Nossova Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya and Steven McGrath On Understanding and Translating Humor From the Administrative Underground..............................7 by Martha Kosir.................................................................14 Maria Guzenko New(ish) Kids on the Block Nora Seligman Favorov Profile of Ryan Green...................................................9 Decolonizing Central Asia Through Translation Newcomer Questions.................................................10 by Shelley Fairweather-Vega............................................16 Lydia Razran Stone Susan Welsh Interview with Children’s Lit Translator Olga Bukhina ..11 SLAVFILMS: Review of Beanpole.....................................22 Lydia Razran Stone Lydia Razran Stone Sources of Confusion for Translators of American SLAVFILE LITE: Krylov IV...................................................25 Political News Reporting..................................................18 TWITTER RusLit Title Challenge...........................4,6,10,28 …Know How much of the sun-ripe original Felicity Rilke made himself forego SLAVIC LANGUAGES DIVISION (Who loved French words – verger, mûr, parfumer) OFFICERS In order to render its underlying sense. Administrator: Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya [email protected] But how does the translator decide what to forego? That process can be modelled as applying a hierarchy of stipulations to the Assistant Administrator: Steven McGrath [email protected] translation in descending order. Since translators can never consistently meet all of the stipulations they derive from the text, they must rank their importance. In short, the further down the hierar- SlavFile is published four times yearly. chy a translation consistently makes it, the more successful it is. Articles of interest to Slavic translators and interpreters are invited. Does it produce the same effect on the reader as the original? The most fundamental standard, the translator’s Designation of Slavic Languages Division 1 membership on ATA membership application lodestar, resides not in the original text, but in the mind of the or renewal form reader. This is why a good translator never resorts to claiming provides full membership. “that’s what it says in the original.” What it says in the original Write to ATA, 225 Reinekers Lane is something written in a language the reader cannot read, and Alexandria, VA 22314 the translator can only claim to have reproduced it if the read- Submissions become the property of SlavFile er would describe their experience of the translation as a native and are subject to editing. reader would describe their experience of the original. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent Does it give the reader the same empirical infor- the views of the Editor or of the Division. 2 mation as the original? While this stipulation deals with EDITOR facts rather than impressions, with material of the kind a student Lydia Razran Stone might be quizzed about on a reading comprehension test, it is still [email protected] centered on the reader’s experience, and was very deliberately not phrased as “does it contain all of the same semantic content of the ASSOCIATE EDITORS original.” I was recently translating an extended theater meta- Liv Bliss phor, in which a decisive historical moment is figured as turning [email protected] on three kinds of lights one would typically find in a theater of the Nora Seligman Favorov time. Translated to preserve semantic content, that phrase would [email protected] read “kerosene lamps, footlights, and floodlights.” The Russian, Maria Guzenko however, does not have the grating repetition of “lights,” and add- [email protected] ing it to the English in an overzealous attempt to convey all the Steven McGrath actual physical objects represented in the original would turn a [email protected] smooth rhetorical device into a clunky mess. “Footlights and ker- Galina Raff osene lamps” has something much closer to the original rhetorical [email protected] effect on the reader and is thus a better translation. Does it avoid overattributing? In his Poetic Diction, COPY EDITORS 3 Owen Barfield rightly noted that students learning a second Jennifer Guernsey language often have greater appreciation for the “architectural” [email protected] element of its beauty than a native speaker can, since they have Lauren Cammenga learned how it constructs meaning through intellectual effort [email protected] rather than childhood absorption. In the same vein, he com- Anastasiya Chernyak [email protected] ments on how reading many examples of a particular kind of poem (ballads, for instance) desensitizes the reader to the unique features of that style and limits them to appreciating the unique Thanks to Jamie Padula of ATA Headquarters virtues a poet has given a particular ballad. A thoughtful transla- for his advice and help. tor of Russian, for example, should be an experienced reader of Russian who is desensitized to its architectural features and will NORA FAVOROV acted as the principal see past them to the literary peculiarities of the specific author editor of this issue of SlavFile. in question. One peculiarity of Russian is what I ironically call its “Platonist” quality; it is much more prone to invoke abstract nouns than English, even when describing everyday experienc- es. For example, in a book I was recently translating, a character SlavFile Page 2 Spring 2020 holds a theater program in such a way as to “cover up the people on the platform than it does on the New the absence of his right incisor.” Translated literally, York subway. Making the English reader feel these this quite straightforward Russian expression reads stylistic distinctions often requires “turning up the like some avant garde conceit. Translated in accor- volume,” since the English ear is not as trained to dance with my third rule, it simply reads “cover up detect shifts into artificial, bureaucratic language. his missing right incisor.” As a translator, my func- In a Russian novel I was recently translating, a KGB tion was to translate the author’s book into English, officer was sitting in his office intimidating a prison- not translate the “flavor” of Russian into English er in colloquial speech when another agent entered by fetishizing perfectly conventional architectural the room and addressed her superior in an official, elements. bureaucratic register, but he rebuffed her and they Does it insist on the logic of English? Once switched back to colloquial, “partner-in-crime” style. 4 the translation has been steered clear of over- In Russian, her bureaucratic tone can be conveyed by attributing, it can be steered into the currents that a brief utterance, but simply translating its semantic occur naturally in English. This process is essential content would have been insufficient to convey that even when one is not translating

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