The change of approach to English translations of Alexander Pushkin's A Journey to Arzrum

Abstract

The author compares five English translations of Alexander Pushkin's A Journey to Arzrum that we know now. These are works made by Birgitta Ingemanson (1974), Ronald Wilks (1998), David and Ludmila Matthews (2003), Nicholas Pasternak Slater (2013), and Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (2016). Four of these translations (the latter ones) have not been included into the latest bibliography of English translations and studies of Pushkin's works (1999). The growing number of translations may indicate an increasing interest to A Journey to Arzrum. This study aims to detect the translators' strategies (the level of domestication or foreignization) and their approach to Pushkin's work; to mark the mistakes and inaccuracies, stylistic features, lexical and syntactic peculiarities of translations and differences between them and between them and the original text. The study also shows how the translators' approach to A Journey to Arzrum changed over time. By pointing out all these we can conclude which type of audience suits each translation most and what the general tendency is. In the article the author gives basic information about these translations and their authors and analyze the examples according to the following sections: formal distinctions and main difference in the approaches; toponyms and ethnonyms; exoticisms and direct speech; stylistic peculiarities of the translations (where the author analyzes bigger, complicated, most stylistically expressive fragments of the text and variations in translating names and titles, along with noting syntactic peculiarities). The majority of inaccuracies the author has found come from David and Ludmila Matthews' translation. At the same time this work is the easiest to perceive for broad (especially non-academic) audience or readers that are not well familiar with Russian and Caucasian culture of that period (foreign-language quotes are translated as well as many exoti-cisms etc.). The other translators tend to save accurately the specificities of Pushkin's text and local peculiarities. The author states that, in general, earlier translators chose domestication as a strategy while the later ones preferred foreignization. The highest degree of foreignization in addition to tendency towards maximal figurativeness of the text is observed in Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's version. The latter characteristic sometimes does not clearly match the lucidity of Pushkin's style. Birgitta Ingemanson with rare exceptions shows quite a good balance at this point in her translation. It is also interesting to mention that Nicholas Pasternak Slater tries to correct Pushkin's own inaccuracies. The author concludes that all the translations are done properly. Ingemanson's, Wilks', Pasternak Slater's and Pevear and Volokhonsky's versions are distinguished by a very accurate and thorough approach. However, Matthews' translation is good and unique in terms of accomplishing a specific purpose - being understandable by common readers. This way it serves to the popularization of A Journey to Arzrum among the English-speaking audience.