Silver age of Russian poetry into French: towards the problem of poetic translation

Abstract

This article studies the problems of translating Silver Age Russian poetry into French, namely Vladimir Mayakovsky, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Nikolai Gumilev. The author examines the main anthologies of Russian poetry published in France in the 20th century: the anthologies of 1947, 1965 and 1985, all three published by Paris publishers. This article focuses on the peculiarities of the translations, when analyzing the translation transformations and examining the strategies of translation practice in France. The linguistic form, consisting of the four macro-levels: morphology, word formation, vocabulary and syntax — is one of the most difficult both to translate and to compare translations. What strategies French translators use determines the degree of equivalence of the translation. The author also looks at the notion of the creativity of poetic translation and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of rhyming and non-rhyming translations. Unrhymed translation brings us closer to conveying the meaning of the poem, but it deprives the poem of rhythm and melody, as well as reduces emotionality. A rhyming translation can convey the emotionality of the poem, but the search for rhyme can lead to approximation and diminish the equivalence of the poem. The author explains the choice of each translation strategy: in a rhyming translation, translators seek to preserve the author’s rhyme image, the “breath” of the poem; while in a non-rhyming translation, the translator is often “closer” to the original.