'I Wanna Hold Your Komsomol Membership Card': Soviet Translations of Western Rock Lyrics and Mid-Century Soft Power

• In Event: Mediators: Translations and Translators in Soviet International Relations

Abstract

The conflicted wish to satiate Soviet youth’s desire for access to Western rock music in the 1950s and ‘60s on the one hand and the need to stem persistent attempts to obtain these cultural products of the “decadent West” on the other prompted the creation of Russian-language covers of popular Western songs. The translations of these texts, often replete with the “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” vernacular of the times and genre, reflect the “rewriting and manipulation” process described by Lefevere (2017) that often rendered the sexually suggestive innuendo and socio-political import of the original English-language text impotent – or, at the very least, musically banal. This paper argues that this linguo-cultural appropriation and distortion presented Western nations with the opportunity to employ soft power measures to take advantage of the dissatisfaction of Soviet listeners with the “lite” covers of the original songs. From Radio Free Europe to magnitizdat, Western governments used every opportunity to provide access to the original versions of pop and rock songs along with their lyrics. The result was a heightened desire among Soviet young people to listen to Western music and understand the lyrics in their original iterations.

Lefevere, Andre. 2017. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. New York: Routledge.

Author

• Thomas Jesús Garza, U of Texas at Austin