VANITY FAIRIN RUSSIAN: TO THE 175 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST PUBLICATION

Abstract

The article examines four Russian translations of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: the early translation by Irinarkh Vvedenskii; the translations made by V. Stein and L. Gay at the turn of the century, and the translation by Mikhail Dyakonov published in 1933-1934. The latter, canonical for Russian culture, was published with a commentary by Gustav Speth in the Academiapublishing house. Different translation strategies are discussed: first, Vvedenskii’s strategy of coauthorship with the translated author, which is sometimes at odds with the intonation of the original. Secondly, Shtein’s and Gay’s aspiration to translate an acknowledged classic ‘word for word’, resulting in obscure expressions and syntactic structures. And finally, Dyakonov’s foreignizing, philologically accurate approach. As can be seen on the material of Dyakonov’s letters to the proofreaders of Academia, syntactically and phonetically foreignizing translation is his conscious strategy. It is noted that the corrections made by the editors M. Lorie and R. Galperina in 1953 and 1968 are mostly insignificant: they incorporate stylistic equivalents, strive for syntactic simplicity and remove ambiguity of certain expressions; besides, Lorie translates charactonyms in a later edition. The article also focuses on Shpet’s scholarly commentary, which has not been republished since his arrest in 1937. Unlike footnotes in later editions, Speth’s commentary primarily clarifies the function of a particular detail. The analysis demonstrates that Dyakonov’s translation method and Speth’s approach to the commentary require intellectual effort from the reader and are aimed at a deep understanding of English culture.