Established in early 2011, the Institute of Translation aims to restore the global status of contemporary Russian literature by setting up a flow of quality foreign literature and creating conditions for a restart of Russian literature translations into foreign languages.
Two events in 2011 – establishment of the Institute of Translation at the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Science (also known as the Pushkin House) and reinstatement of the translation department (ethnic languages of Russia and CIS) at the Gorky Literary Institute – foretell the return of well translated books to the bookstore shelves.
After the breakup of the USSR, the situation with quality literature – translated both into and from Russian – was rather dire. Publication quotas were repealed. The system of promoting the literature of the peoples of the USSR, including the peoples of Russia and Eastern Europe, albeit imperfect, has almost been lost. The same fate befell the translation of Russian fiction into foreign languages. In the past 20 years the number of Russian editions abroad (both modern and classics) has dropped disastrously. The main reason is the collapse of the system for Russian literature promotion and support of its translations into foreign languages.
“Flagging interest in our literature abroad is a bitter fact,” believes Vsevolod Bagno, director of Institute of Russian Literature. “Russian classics translations done in 19th to mid-20th century do not always appeal to the contemporary foreign reader. The linguistic environment has changed, the pace of life is different, but translations are very seldom renewed. The lack of the social-cultural order has led to a dramatic reduction of experts in literary translation. This is a vicious circle. Alas, contemporary Russian literature is being crowded to the periphery of world cultural space and Russia is no longer perceived as a nation producing quality literary products.
The Institute of Translation was founded to reverse this negative trend. In 2012 the institute’s six-language website, where a database of translators and translations of Russian fiction will be posted, along with the bilingual (Russian-English) information-literary resource Russian Canon at Pushkin House – will be launched. This presages the creation of a new communication medium targeting foreign publishers, translators, teachers of Russian and students of Russian philology at foreign universities. Here information will be available on the ‘missed’ authors of the Soviet era and the time of perestroika, forgotten works of Russian classics and the latest editions on Russian publishers, literary magazines and their publications. Materials devoted to Russian classics, prepared for the portal, are already in demand – the literary sites of other countries, respecting the copyright, ask the permission to post them.
“We offer the same approach to communication to our neighbors in the CIS and Eastern Europe, who are now rethinking their history and the role of Russian culture,” says literary critic Evgeny Sidorov. “On the other hand, the Commonwealth nations have not grown a new generation of national translators during the last 20 years. Their culture is still cemented by the bilingualism of Chinghiz Aitmatov, Chabua Abmirajibi, Olzhas Suleymenov or Justinas Marcinkevi
