Translating the Khvoshchinskaya Sisters: To Gloss or Gloss Over Untranslatable History and Culture?

• In Event: 19th-Century Russophone Women Writers II: Women and Translation

Abstract

The Khvoshchinskaya sisters are compelling storytellers, worthy of a broad readership, but their plots often revolve around untranslatable and esoteric phenomena from the lives of Russia’s mid-nineteenth-century nobility and the country’s governmental and financial system. When such phenomena are mentioned in passing, translators have two choices: they can either translate such mentions relatively faithfully and add a gloss or sacrifice some difficult-to-translate significance to avoid disrupting the narrative (also with the option of an explanatory note). This talk will discuss the nature of these challenges and compare solutions that cater to our two prospective audiences: academics and non-specialist lovers of nineteenth-century literature.

Author

• Nora Seligman Favorov, Independent Translator