RusTRANS: The Dark Side of Translation: 20th and 21st Century Translation from Russian as a Political Phenomenon in the UK, Ireland, and the USA

By studying the history of literary translation, primarily the transmission of a single language (Russian), the RusTrans project aims to create a coherent paradigm for historians of the cultural reception of national literatures in translation. Our diachronic approach to translation praxis allows us to contrast past translation networks and strategies with cultural agents in the ever-more volatile context of modern Russia, as we document the political pressures placed on contemporary authors, translators, and publishers. Our project’s main aim is to research why translators, publishers, and funding bodies support the translation of certain texts, and not others. Our focus is translation from Russian into the English and Irish languages during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. To build a diachronic picture of the complex networks underlying the translation process, Dr Muireann Maguire and Dr Cathy McAteer are carrying out four key case studies of individual translators, as well as other research into the wider translation context. The four case studies are:

Three doctoral students, Anna Maslenova, Sarah Gear and Christina Karakepeli, recruited in 2019, are studying the transmission of Russian literature in other European cultures. Anna is currently on the committee of the Anglo-Russian Research Network (ARRN). We have commissioned new translations of contemporary Russian writing in order to observe the dynamics of translator (and publisher) networks today, and will be hosting a two-day conference (Translation Firebird) in April 2022 bringing together key agents of translation publishing to explore the dynamics of contemporary Russian literature in English translation.