7 forgotten Soviet translators who introduced readers to Western literature

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Very often the names of literary translators are undeservedly forgotten. Everyone knows the names of the authors of the works, but they don't even remember those thanks to whom their immortal creations became available not only to the speakers of their native language. But among the famous translators there were also famous Soviet and Russian writers, and their translations often became real masterpieces.

Samuel Marshak

The Russian poet began to engage in translations in his youth, and at the age of 20, Samuil Marshak had already published poems by Chaim Nakhman Bialik, which he translated from Yiddish. Five years later, while on a business trip in Great Britain, Samuil Yakovlevich became interested in British poetry and began to translate ballads into Russian. His translations were notable for their simplicity and accessibility, although the poet himself said that this work can be attributed to a high and very complex art. On his account there are more than two hundred poems in Russian by Burns alone. He also translated Shakespeare, Swift, Blake, Wordsworth, Byron and many more.

Korney Chukovsky

Korney Ivanovich was very fond of the American poet and publicist Walt Whitman and was engaged in translating the works of this author throughout his life, first publishing his collection back in 1907. For more than 30 years, The Anarchist Poet Walt Whitman, translated by Chukovsky, has been published 10 times. The special value of this work was that Chukovsky brought the translation as close as possible to the original, preserving even the rhythm and intonation of Whitman. In addition, the poet also translated prose: Conan Doyle, O. Henry, Mark Twain and other writers.

Boris Pasternak

The famous poet knew French, German, English and Georgian. At a time when the Soviet authorities refused to publish his own works, Romain Rolland advised Pasternak to study Shakespeare, and Vsevolod Meyerhold was able to convince him to prepare a translation of Hamlet for the theater. As a result, "Hamlet", "Romeo and Juliet", "Macbeth" and "King Lear" were published from the poet's pen. In addition to Shakespeare, Boris Pasternak translated Baratashvili, Tabidze, Byron, Keats and other authors. His translations were not literal, but conveyed the brightness of the images, the character and emotions of the heroes of the works.

Rita Wright-Kovaleva

Thanks to Rita Wright, the works of Jerome David Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Edgar Poe, Franz Kafka and many other foreign writers first appeared in Russian. She could bypass strict censorship and fill even the description of the simplest coffee shop with poetics. She spoke fluent French and German, and later English was added to them. At the same time, she translated both into Russian and into German, in particular, “Mystery-buff” at the request of Vladimir Mayakovsky, she translated as early as 22 years old. In the 1950s, she also mastered the Bulgarian language.

Nora Gal

Now it is difficult to imagine, but Eleanor Galperina entered the philological faculty 17 times and nevertheless became a student at the Lenin Pedagogical Institute in Moscow. The reason for the refusal was not at all failures in the exams. It's just that her father fell under the skating rink of Stalin's repressions, and the future famous translator immediately received the stigma of "the daughter of an enemy of the people." Her first published translations were works by Theodore Dreiser, HG Wells and Jack London. But her most famous work was "The Little Prince" by Exupery. Thanks to Nora Gal, the Soviet reader got acquainted with the works of Dickens, Camus, Bradbury, Simak and other writers.

Marina Tsvetaeva

After returning to the USSR from emigration, Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva herself almost did not write, but was actively engaged in translations. She seemed to feel the mood and intonation of the original work, and each line breathed with living emotions. Marina Tsvetaeva has translated the works of Federico Garcia Lorca, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Hersch Weber, William Shakespeare and many more foreign authors.

Anna Akhmatova

The Russian poetess knew several foreign languages and worked with the works of French, Bulgarian, English, Portuguese, Korean, Italian, Greek, Armenian poets, as well as with poems by authors from other countries. The poetess herself did not like to translate, but she was forced to do this when her own works completely ceased to be published. Despite the fact that the poet was often criticized not only as an author, but also as a translator, she was able to publish several poetry collections, including classical Chinese and Korean poetry.

Today we know very little about the life of this amazingly talented woman. Her name is known only to a narrow circle of specialists - translators and music critics. However, researchers of her heritage are sure that if at least a small part of Sofia Sviridenko's works is published, then “it will become obvious that her work is one of the largest and most important phenomena in the culture of the first quarter of the twentieth century”. In the meantime, we all know from childhood only one of her creation - the song "Sleep, my joy, sleep."