CORRECTIONS OF TIME TO ONE RUSSIAN TRANSLATION OF MEASURE FOR MEASURE

Abstract

Generations of Russians are familiar with Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measurethrough the poetically beautiful, light and aphoristic translation of T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik (1939). The same year it was published in a small print run, and in 1960 in The Complete Works of Shakespeare by Iskusstvo Publ. whose circulation (225,000 copies) incomparably exceeded Academiaedition with the translation of the play by M.A. Zenkevich. And today the translation of T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik is published much more often than others. Meanwhile, the outstanding Russian scholar A.A. Smirnov, coeditor and preparer of both Shakespeare’s Collected Works (or any editor after him), did not point to the deletion of the fragments of text and translation errors, although the Iskusstvoedition was prepared and published already during the Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’. Of the two main translation strategies - poetic liberty and philological accuracy - T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik took the first path with Measure for Measure. The liberty of this translation is due to two factors: 1) a semantic and linguistic mistake, particularly important because it was made in the interpretation of the main thesis of the play (do not judge, doing the same yourself, forgive) and 2) self-censorship, obviously associated with the ‘requirements of the time’ and individual fears (withdrawal of dangerous tirades, smoothing and softening of meaning, avoiding specific words). The article shows what exactly the incompleteness, inaccuracies and errors of this translation consist of, and why they need commentary. In addition, a biographical hypothesis is formulated to explain the translator’s self-censorship.