The Dark Side of Translation: 20th and 21st Century Translation from Russian as a Political Phenomenon in the UK, Ireland, and the USA

Project Information

RUSTRANS

Grant agreement ID: 802437

DOI

10.3030/802437

Project closed

EC signature date 31 October 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 31 December 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 346 896,00

EU contribution

€ 1 346 896,00

Coordinated by

THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - RUSTRANS (The Dark Side of Translation: 20th and 21st Century Translation from Russian as a Political Phenomenon in the UK, Ireland, and the USA)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2023-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The RusTrans project explores how national politics interacts with processes of translation (such as selection of texts, the institutionalization of translation as a profession, critical reception, and audience reactions) in the context of the reception of Russian translation in (primarily) English-speaking countries, during a discrete time period. We do not neglect traditional questions of textual fidelity, such as the impact of domesticating or foreignizing strategies, but we prioritise our analysis of how translation has been utilized to connect governments with audiences. The idea that translation confers cultural capital and that it may be consciously utilized (however paradoxically) as a means of reinforcing or even re-inventing national culture is not new; and yet, no single school or group of scholars has previously isolated the phenomenon of translation as a factor in the formation of national identity as a topic for analysis; nor has this factor been studied in the overseas reception of a single culture over an extended period of time. Our project remedies this gap in translation scholarship.

RusTRANS aims to intensively research specific moments in the reception of Russian literature in the Anglophone world (Ireland, the US, and the UK, with Greece as a control), which we believe are key for understanding how the translation process can be manipulated for political or cultural gain. As part of the fourth case study on contemporary publishing, the project recruited 14 translators and authors in order to collect quantitative data on the contemporary process of translation from Russian, part-funding 12 new translations of Russian literary prose into English. Ultimately, RusTrans aims to demonstrate how the process of translation, co-opted for political purposes, plays a key role in the formation of national identity in different contexts: in the emergent Irish Free State; in the formation of British perceptions of Russian culture in the twentieth century; in Russian émigré communities in the United States during the Cold War; and in the spread and representation of contemporary Russian culture and literature in the UK today.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

PI Prof Maguire's monograph on the history of literary translation from Russian in America, focusing on the translator Nicholas Wreden and informed by intensive archival research in the US, is in preparation with Bloomsbury Academic.

The project PDRA, Dr McAteer, has published a monograph based on her case study 'David Magarshack and Penguin Books', now available Open Access from Routledge as 'Translating Great Russian Literature: The Penguin Russian Classics'. Her next monograph, "Cold War Women", on twentieth- and twenty-first century female literary translators working from Russian to English, is in press. PhD Maslenova has published two peer-reviewed articles on individual female translators.

The project co-edited volume 'Translating Russian Literature In The Global Context', which will provide the world's first truly global picture of the reception and translation of Russian literature since 1900, with 37 international contributors, will be published Open Access in March 2024, co-edited by Prof Maguire and Dr McAteer.

All project monographs and articles are or will be available Open Access.

All three of the project's fully funded PhD students, who are working on related topics in Russian-to-English and Russian-to-Greek literary translation, have graduated or are about to submit their theses.

The project conference took place in 2022, and the 12 translation samples funded by RusTrans can be viewed on the project blog.

All five project team members have presented research at international conferences, 2019-2023, and participated in multiple research networks. Additionally, Dr Maguire acted as a juror for the prestigious Read Russia 2020 Translation Prize for the best recent published literary translation from Russian to English. Both Prof Maguire and Dr McAteer have liaised with prominent Russian publishing houses, namely AST and EKSMO respectively, to learn more about in-house processes for selecting and marketing abroad Russian literary fiction.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has made methodological breakthroughs in the subdiscipline of Translator Studies, by publishing new work on individual translators and their contributions to global culture. The project has also advanced the study of the cultural reception of Russian literature globally, and the ways in which Russian literature has been assimilated - and leveraged - to bolster the visibility and cultural prestige of individual nations.

The war on Ukraine has disrupted expected outcomes (e.g. by preventing the publication of most of our part-funded literary translation projects) and sharply politicized our outputs, including our conference, translation Firebird: Finding A Future for Slavonic Voices. Nonetheless, the project team continue to seek funding and pursue research exploring the new pathways for the funding, translation, and dissemination of Russian literature - particularly by dissidents from Putin's regime, who now struggle to find representation in the West - and by Russophone authors in other former Soviet regions.

Cover image of PDRA Cathy McAteer's first monograph

Cover image of project edited volume