On 28 and 29 November, the Royal Library of Belgium will host an international conference devoted to ‘Book translation in multilingual states (1945-2024)‘. This conference is part of the BELTRANS-project regarding Intra-Belgian (literary) book translations since 1970, and is organised in association with Royal Library of Belgium, KU Leuven and UCLouvain.
On Friday 29 November, I will have the pleasure of contributing to this conference alongside Mariana Myrosh, who holds a Master degree in History from the Ukrainian Catholic University of Lviv, and is currently pursuying an master’s degree in Cultural Studies at KU Leuven.
Our lecture, entitled ‘Literary translation in (post-)Soviet Ukraine: a tool for (de)russification’, explores the way in which literary translation was used in Soviet-Ukraine as a tool for russification, and is used today, by the Ukrainian authorities, in the context of nation-building against the background of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, as a tool for derussification.
Here’s the abstract:
The bulk of the territories corresponding to today’s state of Ukraine during the last centuries were included in the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, which today is considered a Russian imperialist project. During those times, the Ukrainian territories were subjected to top-down russification. There is a lot of research showing that literary translation served this purpose. To begin with, certain classics were only available in Russian, which meant that Ukrainian readers were dependent on that language to familiarize themselves with them (Rudnytska 2013). In addition, literature was translated systematically into Ukrainian in an unnatural, Russian-like manner, without making full use of the lexical richness of Ukrainian (Kolomiyets 2023). These practices came to an end in 1991, when Ukraine gained independence.
Also after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Ukraine remained a multilingual country: many inhabitants were (and still are) more fluent in Russian than in Ukrainian, or are bilingual. In terms of book sales, in post-Soviet Ukraine for a long time the Russian language remained dominant (Chernetsky 2011: 50). The same applies to the people’s reading habits: according to sociological research, in 2018, the majority of the Ukrainian population in practice preferred Russian as a reading language (Osvitoria 2018). However, the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, has caused a turnaround (Rudnytska 2023). The Ukrainian authorities have passed laws restricting the import of books, originals and translations, printed in Russia, and banning the production of publications in Russian only. As an effect of this government interference in the free market, today the Ukrainian language is privileged as a reading language.
Selected references
Chernetsky, Vitaly. 2011. “Nation and translation. Literary translation and the shaping of modern Ukrainian culture.” Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts. Literary translation in Eastern Europe and Russia. Edited by B. J. Baer. Pp 33-53.
Kolomiyets, Lada. 2023. “The politics of literal translation in Soviet Ukraine. The case of Go The case of Gogol’s ‘The tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich’.” Translation and Interpreting Studies. 18:3. Pp. 325-359.
Osvitoria. 2018. https://osvitoria.media/ru/experience/shho-chytayut-ukrayintsi-prygolomshlyvi-tsyfry-ta-fakty-2/
Rudnytska, Nataliya. 2013. “Soviet censorship and translation in contemporary Ukraine and Russia.” Translation Journal. 17:2. http://translation.journal.net/journal/64catcher.htm.
Idem. 2023. “Literary translation and elimination of the Soviet ideology in contemporary Ukraine.” Academic Journal of Modern Philology. 19. Pp. 283-292
You can sign up for the conference via this website.
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