Secondhand stories in between fact and fiction: the impact of translators’ footnotes in Svetlana Alexievich’s narrative

Abstract

This article examines the role of footnotes in interlinguistic translations of historical references from the Soviet era. The chosen corpus is Vremja sekond hènd, a collection of witness testimonials documenting the collapse of the USSR, compiled by Nobel Prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich. This polyphonic narrative covers critical moments in Soviet history and contains numerous references to the past of the communist empire that may be unclear to the average Western reader. The aim of the study is to identify possible translation challenges and to analyze the strategies implemented in translating the original Russian text into four languages: French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English. The research findings suggest that the use (as well as the non-use) of footnotes in Vremja sekond hènd serves as the primary tool for translators to determine their degree of intervention in the text and, as a result, the extent to which they attempt to make the content more accessible to the audience. Furthermore, the decision whether to use footnotes (or not) in the translated versions appears to be influenced by the translators’ and publishers’ categorization of Alexievich’s works as fiction, non-fiction, or a hybrid literary genre.