Liberating Translation II: Liberating Cultural Mediators

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel is submitted as part of the stream “Liberating Translation.” The panel adds new scholarly insight to the study of literary translation during the Soviet era, examining the ideological influences, repressive censorship policies, and bans imposed on translators as cultural agents and mediators in the USSR. Drawing on archival materials and innovative research on Ukrainian and Latvian sources ranging from the early Soviet period to the late Soviet era, the speakers explore the multifaceted challenges faced by translators and the inventive forms of unofficial resistance employed to circumvent ideological pressures. Among the topics addressed by the panel presenters are: the liberating function of translation in the process of establishing a national translation school in the early 1930s in Ukraine and the role of the literary magazine Vsesvit during late Soviet times, the liberation of the voices of repressed translators in Soviet Latvia, as well as the study of letters from Ukrainian translators who were prisoners of the Gulag in the Brezhnev era. The papers explore multiple censorial constraints and the resilient voices of translators who found creative ways to resist and persist in the face of repression.

Sub Unit

• Linguistics/Language Pedagogy/Translation

Chair

• Maria G. Rewakowicz, U of Washington

Papers

• Mykola Zerov Unedited: Archival Translations and Commentaries - Lada Kolomiyets, Taras Shevchenko National U of Kyiv (Ukraine)

• Ideology, Censorship, and Translation Policy in the Materials of the Latvian State Archives: Liberating the Voices of the Oppressed - Evita Badina, Daugavpils U (Latvia)

• Speaking between the Lines: Letters from the Gulag - Valentyna Savchyn, Lund U (Sweden)

Discussant

• Olena Huzar, Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical U (Ukraine)