Facts of Translation 1: Recovering Forgotten Episodes in the History of Translation

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

As part of the interdisciplinary panel sequence “Facts of Translation,” this panel addresses significant episodes in the history of Soviet-era translation. Based on archival research and previously unpublished materials, the presentations focus on two literary institutions: the Soviet literary journal Internatsional’naia Literatura/ International Literature and the Union of Soviet Translators. The history of these institutions reflects important changes that occurred in the sphere of literary translation of the Soviet period; it also showcases fierce ideological debates around theories and practices of literary translation. These particular case studies pose broader questions about the ideology of translation, discuss various roles of translation within the Soviet literary sphere, and touch upon biographies of many prominent writers and scholars involved in translation work. The papers draw on the theoretical framework presented in major studies of translation ideology (Tymoczko, Venuti, Gentzler), and provide analysis of material hitherto inaccessible to Western scholars of translation.

Sub Unit

• Interdisciplinary Panels

Organizer

• Maria Y. Khotimsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chair

• Boris Wolfson, Amherst College

Papers

• English Translators in 'International Literature' in the Early 1930s: Poetics of/and Biography - Elena Ostrovskaya, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)

• Translation at War: The Multilingual Journal 'International Literature' During World War II - Elena Zemskova, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)

• As Stalin Lay Dying: A Meeting of Soviet Translators on March 4, 1953 - Susanna Witt, Uppsala U (Sweden)

Discussant

• Brian James Baer, Kent State U