Dear Dashkova supporters,
I have been asked to circulate info about the following Translation Studies event featuring our very own Misha Vodopyanov, on Tatiana Tolstaya, this Wednesday.
The next seminar in translation studies will be given by
Mikhail Vodopyanov, University of Edinburgh
Contemporary Russian literature in translation: Tatyana Tolstaya
Wednesday, 31 January 2018, 4.00-5.30pm, University of Edinburgh, 50 George Square, Project Room
This seminar focuses on English translations of one of the most significant contemporary writers in Russia, Tatiana Tolstaya (b. 1951), who belongs to a well-known literary family that includes the writers Leo and Alexei Tolstoy. Known for her collections of short fiction, the dystopian novel Kys (The Slynx), and her acerbic essays on contemporary Russian life, Tolstaya, according to The Washington Post, is "considered by many critics and writers to be the foremost writer of her generation, a miniaturist whose stories combine the linguistic stardust of Vladimir Nabokov and the emotional wisdom of Anton Chekhov".
Since 2013, Tolstaya has been regularly publishing her nonfiction texts in Russian on her public Facebook page, and then collecting these online texts for print publication as volumes of nonfiction. Translations of Tolstayas recent nonfiction appear in the American periodical The New Yorker (both in print and online), and my close examination of Tolstayas text Bus Stop (first published on Facebook on November 10, 2014) uncovers striking omissions and discursive shifts in the much-abridged translation addressing English audiences in The New Yorker (published on December 22, 2014).
After reviewing translations of Tolstaya available in English, I will consider discursive tensions that set the English and Russian narratives of her Bus Stop apart, both in form and content, and examine the discursive strategies that the translation employs to accommodate the original Russian narrative and its textual representations for its English-speaking audience.
For some of Tolstayas recent nonfiction writings in English translation, including Bus Stop, please see her works available online from the The New Yorker:
Mikhail Vodopyanov holds an MSc (Distinction) in Translation Studies from the University of Edinburgh, where he is currently researching a PHD thesis on the construction of memory of the Soviet past in the nonfiction of the contemporary Russian writer and public intellectual Tatyana Tolstaya. Mikhails research interests include literary translation, translation methodology, interpreting studies, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and memory studies. As a translator, he has collaborated with the National Museum of Scotland, The State Hermitage Museum (Russia), British Council Scotland, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
The Princess Dashkova Russian Centre
The University of Edinburgh
19 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh EH8 9LN
Tel. 0131 6 509902
Email: Dashkova.Centre@ed.ac.uk