Tag Archives: translated literature

08.25.12
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З днем незалежності! [Happy Independence Day!]

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day!

Yesterday, August 24, was the twenty-first anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union. Ukraine is one of my absolute favorite countries – I was there for two or three days in 2009 and I have spent three years now wishing I could go back – so I decided to prepare a nice little post as a tribute to this country.

Before it became independent in 1991, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union and before that, the Russian Empire. For much of its history, it has been ruled over by various people, such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Even though it was not an independent state for much of modern history, Ukraine has a distinct language and culture.

Despite the fact that the Ukrainian language was often repressed (both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union practiced policies of Russification), it is a rich and vibrant language today. Though it is closely related to Russian and is part of the East Slavic subgroup along with Russian, it has had a heavy Polish influence and is distinct from the Russian language. I have never properly studied it, but I can understand quite a bit of it when it’s spoken. To compare it to Russian, consider the title of this post: З днем незалежності. In Russian, that is С днём независимости. Close, but not exactly the same.
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05.25.12
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Literary Translation and the Nobel Prize in Literature

On Wednesday, I hosted literary translator Lisa Carter on this blog. I also wrote a guest post for her blog, too, about literary translation and the Nobel Prize in literature. I am too tired to blog properly today, so just read my guest post on her website if you have not already.

After today, only six more days left for Blogathon. Isn’t it crazy? I can’t believe I’ve blogged so much!

01.30.12
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There is Happy Russian Literature – If You Know Where to Look

Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на другу, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.

[All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.]
-L. Tolstoy

I think Tolstoy’s famous phrase could certainly apply to literature as well. All happy literature may contain conflict, but everything gets resolved by the end, oftentimes unrealistically. But every unhappy piece of literature has its own way of being unhappy.

Until this weekend, I was under the impression that there was no happy Russian literature. I always chalked it up to that elusive Russian soul. Pretty much all the Russian literature I’ve read has been quite depressing. The Master and Margarita is, at heart, a very melancholy piece of work, despite its dark humor throughout. (I won’t spoil the ending because you absolutely must read it for yourself, but if you want to discuss it in the comments, feel free.) Doctor Zhivago is likewise depressing, as is Anna Karenina. Crime and Punishment is a bit harder to characterize since there is redemption – or at least the promise of redemption – at the end, but there is a sufficient amount people dying and suffering to render it depressing. In the novel I’m reading now, A Hero of our Time, two people have already died and I’m not even halfway through.

The novel that changed this for me was Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter. I just finished it this weekend. And yes, I know there is a civil war (the Pugachev uprising under Catherine the Great) that takes place throughout most of the novel, but everything just works out so well for the protagonist in the end. Really, what was Pushkin thinking? It is quite shocking and it’s not like Pushkin was incapable of writing something completely depressing. (Have you read his poem The Bronze Horseman?)

01.26.12
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I Love Russian Literature. But I’m Afraid of My Lit Class.

We will be reading Red Cavalry later in the semester, unfortunately not in the original Russian.

I debated about whether to post this or not and eventually decided to take the plunge. I don’t usually like to write about my time in high school because it was an extremely unhappy period for me. But here goes…

I had my first classes last week, one of which is a Russian literature class that I probably should have taken a while ago. I have been avoiding taking a literature class – this is the first and only one I have taken at university – because of a rather horrid experience I had in a senior-year English class back in high school. This is one of the reasons why I am glad I blog rather anonymously, because that allows me to write about this anecdote.

The teacher of the aforementioned class did not like me. Yes, I know that is a very common and overdone complaint from students, but in my case it was true. I’ll be honest: I was not a student whom teachers disliked, as I always did well, but this teacher and I did not get along. She was unfairly biased against me, and though I realized this at the time, it has become more clear with hindsight. (Imagine my surprise when I read in Elif Batuman’s The Possessed about a published scholar’s argument that advanced an argument about Dostoevsky that I wrote in an essay on Crime and Punishment. I received a B on the paper; I deserved an A- at the very least.) I barely managed to scrape by with a decent grade and at the end of the year, I was so disgusted with the experience that I vowed to abandon the study of literature forever.

I have not taken a single literature class since, but last semester I found out that I would need a Russian literature class for my degree. I signed up for a rather broad survey course (okay, it does have an underlying theme, but I can’t tell you the title of the course because that would give away all my secrets, you know?) So far, I am really liking the class – I think the professor really likes what I have to say, which is so unlike my high school experience with the literature course.

Anyway, hopefully everything will work out. At the very least, I will have read loads of Russian literature by the end of this semester.

(Random note: we are reading Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry. The title in Russian is Конармия [konarmiya]. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that simply mean cavalry, not red cavalry? Ah, the great mysteries of life!)

12.23.11
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Finished! And Home.

I am finally finished with this semester. I only had one exam (but I already whined about that so I’ll refrain from whining further) and now I am finished and have arrived home. The exam went well overall, though I was worried I would not finish in time, but I did and I received a good mark in the class. You know what the Russians (and the Bard himself!) say: Всё хорошо, что хорошо кончается. [All's well that ends well.]

Not to brag or anything, but… take a look at this:

You can click to see it larger. And I’ll save you the trouble that it’s a screenshot of my grade for Russian class from my account on my university’s system. The “C” means for credit (as opposed to pass/fail) and the 3.0 is the number of credits. The A+ is my grade. How in the world did I manage to pull off an A+ in an advanced Russian class?? Believe me, I’m not complaining, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Anyway, I have some big plans for this break. I will be working on my thesis and some other school-related reading, but I also have some more fun stuff planned. I am working on a blog post about a big decision I made recently and I would like to release my first translation from the Russian this break. I have chosen my work – a Chekhov short story I’m sure you’ve heard of – and I will offer it for a small fee. Yes, you could find a translation on the internet, but mine will be better. I have excellent attention to detail, perfectionism, and I will include little historical/translator’s notes to explain some bits so you can fully appreciate life in the Crimea and Moscow at the turn of the century.

What do you think? Would you buy a translation from me? (It would be in ebook and/or PDF format, so we are not talking about a huge sum of money here.)

12.01.11
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My First Guest Post

I am very, very happy to announce that I have published my first guest post, obviously on a site that is not my own. The wonderful Lisa Carter of Intralingo invited me to submit something a little while back. Some issues came up for both of us, but after some delays I have written the post, sent it to Lisa, and it has been live on her blog since Wednesday of this week.

I discovered Lisa’s blog relatively recently. If you are into language and literary translation and do not read it, you are missing out. Lisa is a Canadian who loves the Spanish language the way I love the Russian language, so she has had great success translating modern Spanish authors. (In fact, one of her translations was recently nominated for a very prestigious prize and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she wins it.)

Overall, my first experience with guest posting has been very positive and quite fun. If you want me to write a guest post on your blog, or write a guest post on this blog, don’t hesitate to contact me.

By the way, this comment by Carolyn Y. on my prior post completely made my day: As an aside, I found your blog through your guest post on Intralingo– beautiful translation of The White Guard intro! Maybe you haven’t been published, but you could and should be. Carolyn, I cannot tell you how much that means to me!

At this point, I feel like I am starting to ramble on a little bit, but I have one final thing to say: ever since I became interested in translation and reached out to the translation community on the internet, I have been so happy about how friendly and welcoming they all are. I love translators!

03.19.11
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What I’m Reading

Even though I’ve been home for a week, I haven’t read very much. I think this is mostly due to the fact that I spend the previous eight weeks reading A LOT of books. Plus, I’ve been in that strange frame of mind when all I want to do is write and write and write, so I have been indulging that desire.

But I have been reading a bit–two books, to be exact. They’re very different but both very enjoyable.


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