Lithuanian Translation Research Articles

The Lithuanianisation of Adam Mickiewicz

In this article, I analyse the cultural practices applied by Lithuanian interwar intellectuals seeking to Lithuanianise the great Polish romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz. Mickiewicz was born to a family of Polish-speaking nobles in a predominantly Belarusian part of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Because his historically themed works had an impact on the Lithuanian national movement, Lithuanian intellectuals sought ways to attribute Mickiewicz to Lithuanian culture.
 Mickiewicz, who wrote in Polish, was a stalwart Polish-Lithuanian patriot. As this was in conflict with ethnocultural Lithuanian nationalism, interwar defenders of Mickiewicz’s attribution to Lithuanian literature looked for additional arguments supporting the poet’s Lithuanianness. In this article, I explore two ways that Mickiewicz was Lithuanianised: through a myth surrounding his ethnic origins and by introducing distortions into Lithuanian translations of the poet’s works.
 From the end of the nineteenth century, Lithuanians generally saw their local nobility as ‘Polonised Lithuanians’. This view applied to Mickiewicz as well. Without having any factual evidence to support it, the interwar Lithuanian philosopher Stasys Šalkauskis sought to convince readers that Mickiewicz was descended from the Rimvydas clan. Another means of Lithuanianising Mickiewicz was through ideologically motivated editing and distorting translations of his works into Lithuanian. The most striking example of this was a 1927 anthology of the poet’s works compiled by Lithuanian literary historian Mykolas Biržiška.

Passing through the filter

This article presents the translations of Spanish and Latin American authors into Lithuanian during the 50 years of Soviet occupation (1940–1990). The purpose of this research is to explore the legacy of these translations within the context of preventive censorship practiced in the Soviet Union. Preventive censorship involves selectively filtering books and authors for inclusion or exclusion from publication due to ideological or political considerations (cf. Leonardi 2008). The article addresses three main questions: (1) What was the volume of Spanish-language literature in the overall corpus of translations in Soviet Lithuania? (2) Which Spanish-language authors were accessible to Lithuanian readers during the period under consideration? And (3) What factors might have influenced their selection for publication in Lithuanian translation? An attempt is made to describe the corpus of translations from Spanish into Lithuanian, with a particular focus on the selection criteria to be met for inclusion of these literary works in the Soviet canon of foreign literature.

The Forgotten Speech Tag: An In-depth Look into the Translation of Speech Tags into Lithuanian in George Orwell's "Animal Farm"

This paper analyses and compares the three currently available Lithuanian translations of George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm (1945) by Arvydas Sabonis (1991), Edita Mažonienė (2021) and Jovita Liutkutė (2022) with special attention given to the frequently overlooked translation of speech tags. It aims to reveal the peculiarities as well as assess the quality of the translations of the collected speech tags. This is achieved by applying quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, i.e. by systematising the relevant elements of the text and analysing them according to the chosen classification of translation shifts as well as comparing the collected data of each individual translation. One of the most notable aspects of the translations, as observed during the analysis, is a significant variety in the translations of pronouns and verbs, occurring due to the application of the translation shifts of specification and implicitation, which function on a semantic level. These aspects reflect the linguistic preferences of translators when translating into synthetic languages and highlight the richness of the Lithuanian language. Key words: translation shifts, speech tags, Animal Farm

Mindfulness, Physical Activity and Sports Participation: Validity Evidence of the Lithuanian Translation of the State Mindfulness Scale for Physical Activity 2 in Physically Active Young Adults.

The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Lithuanian translation of State Mindfulness in Physical Activity (SMS-PA-2) in a sample of physically active students. A total sample of 539 students from universities and colleges (50.3% men; mean age 23.3 ± 7.2 years) were asked to provide demographical data, report physical activity (PA) and PA habits and fill in measures of trait awareness, autonomous motivation in physical activity, trait body appreciation, trait body functionality appreciation and disordered eating attitudes and behaviours and self-esteem via an online anonymous survey. Students also provided information about their participation in organized team sports, organized individual sports, recreational sports and home exercise. Results. The SMS-PA-2 replicated the original four-factor structure, with good internal consistency (except for the Accepting Mind subscale). Invariance analyses across sex groups revealed an acceptable fit of the configural, metric and scalar models. However, in the multi-group analysis, metric invariance and scalar invariance were not confirmed. The SMS-PA-2 was positively associated with leisure-time PA, PA habits, more self-determined motivation for exercise, trait awareness, trait body appreciation, trait body functionality appreciation and self-esteem. A negative association was observed between the SMS-PA-2 and disordered eating attitudes and behaviours. Home exercisers and students engaged in team sports demonstrated lower levels of state mindfulness in PA than those engaged in organized individual and recreational sports. The Lithuanian version of the SMS-PA-2 is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring state mindfulness in PA. This instrument is recommended for researchers who aim to investigate the role of state mindfulness in the PA in Lithuanian-language-speaking samples of young adults. Future studies should explore the Lithuanian version of the SMS-PA-2 by asking participants to fill questionnaires in immediately after the PA session, and measurement invariance between sexes should be further tested.

The Lithuanian Translation and Reception of Mór Jókai’s novel And Yet It Moves

Mór Jókai’s novel And Yet It Moves [És mégis mozog a föld] was published in Lithuanian translation in 1892. The translator, Antanas Kriščiukaitis-Aišbė took as the basis the Polish translation of the book, which in turn was based on the German translation. In fact, it is not a translation in the traditional sense but a shortened, abridged version. The translation has attracted a great deal of interest, with numerous reviews by leading Lithuanian literary figures of the time, moreover, the influence of the Hungarian novel can be traced in several Lithuanian literary works. The impact of the work on Lithuanian culture is illustrated by the fact that several prominent figures of the time used the title of the novel as a kind of slogan of the Lithuanian national revival movement.The aim of the study is to examine how the Lithuanian translation came into being, to analyze the text of the translation itself, to demonstrate how it was received by Lithuanian critics, which contemporary Lithuanian works show its influence, how the title of the work survived in Lithuanian culture, and what factors influenced its popularity in Lithuania. Accordingly, it briefly describes the original work, the most important bibliographical data of the German and Polish translations, the translator’s personality and his works, and examines the factors and aspects that may have played a role in the choice of the work to be translated. In addition to the bibliographical data of the Lithuanian edition and the circumstances of its publication, I will analyze the preface and then examine the translator’s retention or omission of certain passages, the internal logic behind these, the stylistic differences from the original version, and how these may have affected the reception of the work.The paper briefly discusses contemporary reviews and tries to answer the question of how the Lithuanian reception was influenced by the characteristics of Lithuanian society at the time. The study also examines which Lithuanian literary works show the influence of Jókai’s novel, and analyzes Maironis’s poems Through Pains to Glory [Tarp skausmų į garbę] (1893) and Young Lithuania [Jaunoji Lietuva] (1905), where the similarities in plot and motives with Jókai’s work are so numerous that these works can clearly be considered to be inspired by Jókai; as well as Šatrijos Ragana’s short novels Viktutė (1901) and In the Old Manor House [Sename dvare] (1922), and Liudvika Didžiulienė-Žmona’s For the Fatherland [Del tevynes!] (1893).Finally, it presents documented instances of the use of the novel’s title as a slogan and examines their context. The paper concludes that the success of the work in Lithuania can be explained by similarities in the historical and social development of the two countries and between the social conditions in Hungary pictured in the novel and prevailing in Lithuania at the time of the publication of the translation.

Shakespeare in Lithuanian

Shakespeare’s plays and poetry have been translated into over one hundred languages and are performed, read, and taught throughout much of the world more often than those of any other playwright. The article aims to briefly survey the history of translating Shakespeare’s works into Lithuanian. Current developments in business, communication, and cultural production impact the scope and priorities of translations. Our archival research yielded limited information on Lithuanian translations of Shakespeare’s works and their quality. It raised more questions than provided answers. The findings show that the largest number of translations of Shakespeare’s works was made by Aleksys Churginas (published in 1946-1973). Four plays were translated by Antanas Danielius (published in 1983-1997). The two most recent translations by Saulius Repečka were published in 2016. No comprehensive studies of Lithuanian translations of Shakespeare’s plays or their publication/republication history currently exist. The translation of sonnets has been investigated in a doctoral thesis.

The Impact of Censorship on the Soviet Canon of English Literature in Translation: A Case Study of Joseph Conrad

The article gives an overview of translations of Joseph Conrad’s works into Lithuanian during the Soviet period (1940–1990), in an attempt to answer the question why some important titles belonging to the English Conradian canon had not been translated. Conrad’s Lithuanian translations are discussed in the broader context of translations into Russian in the former USSR, comparing to what extent the processes were similar and where they differed. On the basis of Soviet literary criticism, official publications in Russian and in Lithuanian, and paratexts in published translations, the article traces how the image of Conrad and his works was constructed for the Soviet readership. The article concludes that Conrad’s case was a form of less obvious (invisible) censorship when the writer is not banned, but through a careful selection of works for translation relegated to a narrow genre niche and ousted to the periphery of the Soviet canon of translated classical English literature. His socio-political novels (Secret Agent among them) were eliminated from translation into Lithuanian precisely because of their direct or indirect references either to Russia or to political themes. The comparison of Conrad’s bibliographies in translation reveals that Conrad’s presence in Lithuanian translations and literary research is markedly smaller than in Russian, which suggests that Conrad’s works were deemed more undesirable and access to them more restricted in one of the Western republics of the Soviet state than in its centre.

Deontic Modality in Lithuanian Translations of EU Legislation

The present article is a corpus-driven investigation into deontic modality in the Lithuanian translations of EU legislation. It builds on the data of the EUR-Lex2/2016 parallel corpus. The article discusses the pivotal points of deontic modality and its realisation in English and Lithuanian. It then presents the corpus data and the most frequent lexical bundles through which deontic modality is expressed in the English subcorpus. The discussion section analyses how deontic lexical bundles in the source text were translated into Lithuanian.

Low Value Translations and Retellings from Intermediate Languages of Andersen’s Fairy Tale “Thumbelina”

Hans Christian Andersen is one of the most famous Danish writers whose fairy tales have been read by almost every child. The first book of Andersen’s fairy tales appeared in Lithuanian in 1895 and their popularity has not faded ever since. However, most Lithuanian translations consist of fairy tales translated not from Danish, but from intermediate languages (English, Spanish, Italian, French). This article analyses abridged, retold versions and translations from the intermediate languages of Andersen’s tale “Thumbelina”. It is concluded that, due to commercialization and the desire to publish the tales more cheaply, they are distorted and simplified. As a result, the storyline changes and the artistically motivated, integral structural elements of content and form are violated.

Simono Daukanto 1846‑ųjų Pasakų Fedro rankraščio ir spaudinio ortografija

T H E ORTHOGRAPHY OF BOTH MANUSCRIPT AND PRINTED BOOK (1846) OF SIMONAS DAUKANTAS’S LITHUANIAN TRANSLATION OF THE FABLES OF PHAEDRUS Simonas Daukantas prepared two manuscripts of his Lithuanian translation of the Fables of Phaedrus: one in the first half of 1836 (PaP), and another ten years later in about the first half of 1846 (PaPhr). Daukantas exploited two different orthographic tactics in tapping the first manuscript (PaP) as the source for the second one (PaPhr): (1) either to substitute older orthographic peculiarities for his own more recently introduced spelling equivalents (more frequent approach), or (2) just to keep them (more seldom).

Imiona, tytuły i deskrypcje określające Chrystusa w „Postylli Mniejszej” (1590) Jakuba Wujka i „Postylli” (1599) Mikołaja Daukszy

The article analyzes the names, titles and descriptions of Christ in Jakub Wujek’s Postylla Minor (1590). Attention is paid to the types of names and the role they play in the process creating the text itself and its style. Also important is the role of the onomasticon in shaping the religious discourse of the epoch, the transitional stage between the Renaissance and the Baroque, which leads one to consider the assumptions of cultural onomastics. While analyzing the names of Christ in the text of the Polish preacher, an attempt is also made to trace the way they are translated into Lithuanian in Mikalojus Daukša’s Postylla (1599). The data for analysis come from the database constructed for the purpose of the study, embracing seventy sermons (the entire Postylla Minor, the 1590 edition) and the concordance of “Daukša’s Postylla” on the website seniejirastai.lt. Overall, 260 Polish and Lithuanian names have been analyzed. The description also takes into account the contexts of their use (150 manuscript pages). Based on an analysis of theonyms, two basic profiles have been distinguished of the central figure of Christ: Christ as a human and Christ as God, closely related to each other, with the former profile being the dominant one. Extensive names and descriptions in Wujek’s work draw attention to the person of Christ, increase the intellectual value of the text, and fill it with solemnity. The names perform a slightly different function in Daukša’s Lithuanian translation. Their translation is almost literal, but some regular changes can be noticed, such as reducing the length of the name, writing the titles in lower case, and omitting the adjectives that ennoble Christ. Therefore, a conclusion can be drawn about a slightly different stylistic role of names in Daukša’s work, which results in the text being less solemn and more colloquial. Further research on biblical anthroponymy in the translated work of the Lithuanian preacher may corroborate this conclusion or reveal new features of Daukša’s style and his translation strategies.

Nationalism, Modernization and the Polylogue of Civilizations

This is a translation of the article “Nationalism, Modernization and the Polylogue of Civilizations” by Lithuanian sociologist Vytautas Kavolis. The original article was published in English in 1991 in the Comparative Civilizations Review, and the Lithuanian translation appeared in 1992 in a journal Proskyna (translated by Saulius Spurga). In this article Kavolis discusses complex relationship of nationalism and cultural configurations of modernity, postmodernity and antimodernist thinking. He considers how different forms of thinking shape the violent and humane manifestations of nationalism, and what opportunities are offered by globalization to the national identity.

Physical Activity and Healthy Habits Influence Mood Profile Clusters in a Lithuanian Population

Moods have been investigated previously in a range of cultural contexts. In our study, we investigated if six mood profiles previously identified, termed the iceberg, inverse Everest, inverse iceberg, shark fin, submerged, and surface profiles, were also evident among a Lithuanian sample. A Lithuanian translation of the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS-LTU) was completed by a sample of 746 participants (male = 199, female = 547) aged from 17–78 years (M = 41.8 years, SD = 11.4 year). Seeded k-means cluster analysis clearly identified the six hypothesized mood profiles, the prevalence of which reflected previous findings. Cluster prevalence varied significantly by sex, age, exercise and smoking status, frequency of overeating, and self-rated health of participants. Male participants and older adults were under-represented for the inverse Everest profile and over-represented for the iceberg profile. Those who reported more healthy habits (i.e., exerciser, non-smoker, rarely overeat) and those reporting better self-rated health were over-represented for the iceberg profile and under-represented for negative mood profiles; namely, the inverse Everest, inverse iceberg, and shark fin profiles. Findings supported the cross-cultural invariance of the mood profile clusters and confirmed the link between unhealthy habits and negative mood profiles.

The Issue of the Lyrics (Verbal Text) of the German Lied: The Original vs. Translations

The variants of translations of the poetic lyrics of Richard Strauss’s song Zueignung, Op. 10 No. 1 (to Hermann von Glim’s poem, 1885) into Lithuanian, done in the Soviet era and kept in the archives of the Lithuanian Radio and Television (LRT), testify to the negative influence of the translation process on the interrelationship between the poetic and musical texts in respect of the original piece. The methodology of comparing the original and translated lyrics used in the research revealed considerable interlinguistic and intralinguistic differences emerging after the lyrics had been translated into Lithuanian. In the analysis of translations of the texts of Strauss’s song Zueignung, Op. 10 No. 1, the authors relied on the model of translation criticism by Christiane Nord (1991, 2005). Based on it, several translation tactics applied intuitively by the Lithuanian translators in the process of the translation of the lyrics were observed. We refer to Vinay and Darbelnet’s indirect translation method (1958), Recker’s all kinds of translation transformation (1950), and Nord’s three-phase model (1991). It was impossible to identify the specific methods that the translators used in the translation of the verbal texts as the competence of a researcher into translation studies is required in order to establish such facts. The analysis of the translation variants of the poetic lyrics of Strauss’s song Zueignung led to the conclusion that in the translation process, the translators frequently changed the verbal syntax of the Lied, which contradicted the situations of rhetorisation of the musical syntax and the musical text. The results of the research prove that, from the point of view of the coexistence of the verbal and the musical texts, in quite a few cases automatic adaptation of the translated text to a stable musical text leads to the situation when musical works of the Lied genre can no longer function adequately. The reason for this is the discrepancy between verbal and musical syntaxes and their semantic meanings, which contradicts the idea of a meaningful interaction between the composer’s two texts. After translating a verbal text into another language, a Lied-type composition can convey the composer’s idea only in the presence of a harmonious structural and meaningful interaction between the two texts.

Литовские народные песни в переводе Вяч. Иванова

he study is devoted to the publication of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s Russian translation for Lithuanian folk songs, made for unpublished collection of Lithuanian literature (“Sbornik litovskoj literatury,” Petrograd, [1915–1917]; ed. by Iu. Baltrushaitis, M. Gorky). Around the same time, Baltrushaitis was the editor-compiler and translator of the collection of Lithuanian folklore at the publishing house of M. Sabashnikov. This project was also not implemented. Ivanov’s work on Lithuanian translations is chronologically close to his participation in other collections of national literatures. In an extensive introductory article, the author reconsctucts the history of the creation of translations from Lithuanian, using the correspondence of V. Ivanov, Y. Baltrushaitis, M. Sabashnikov. The research shows that Ivanov’s work on translations for the Lithuanian collection stretched from the beginning of 1916 to the summer months, when the poet’s family lived in a village near Sochi. The preamble also contains information about the first publication of an incomplete collection of these translations, made in 1973 by Yu. Tumyalis using unauthorized typescript from the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (Vilnius). In this publication, the texts of Ivanov’s translations are given by autographs from the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskiy Dom) of RAS and the Roman Archive of Vyach. Ivanov. The textual comments describe the currently available sources of Ivanov’s translations, such as correspondence of Iu. Baltrushaitis, epistolary materials of others, Ivanov’s preparatory materials, manuscripts, translations from the archival storages of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Rome, Vilnius.

Johanno Arndto Rojaus Darǯelio maldų redagavimo istorija (1807–1817)

The History of Revisions of Prayers in Johann Arndt’s ROJAUS DARǮELIS (1807 – 1817) S u m m a r y Johann Arndt (1555–1621), the German theologian and next-generation religious reformer is the author of the uniquely successful prayer book titled Paradiesgärtlein (Magdeburg,1612). The first known Lithuanian translation of Arndt’s Paradiesgärtlein appeared in early 19th century in Prussian Lithuanian. It was published in 1807 by the widow of Gottlieb Lebrecht Hartung, a printer from Königsberg. This article aims to reveal the history of revisions of six prayers from Johann Arndt’s Rojaus Darelis (The Garden of Paradise) that were first published in Königsberg in 1807. The goal is to show the revision trends and content transformations Arndt’s texts underwent in the second, 1816 Königsberg edition of Rojaus Darǯelis, the 1816 Tilsit edition, and the unofficial 1817 conventiclers’ (Lith. surinkimininkai) hymnal Wiſſokies Naujes Gieſmes arba Ewangelißki Pſalmai (Tilsit). The analysis of the prayers has shown that the language of the hymnal Rojaus Darelis (Königsberg, 1807) is rather grounded on the standard of the official ecclesiastical and philological papers of Prussian Lithuania: the prevalent southern subdialect of the Western Aukštaitians of Prussian Lithuania. It is dominated by rather stable normative elements of morphology and diacritic orthography, as evidenced in the philological written works of the period: the grammars of the Lithuanian language by Gottfried Ostermeyer (1791) and Christian Gottlieb Mielcke (1800). The only identifiable non-grammatical orthography trait is the ending -ęs that sometimes appears in the acc. sg. endings of feminine adjectives, pronouns, and numerals. A comparison of the prayers from Rojaus Darǯelis that were published in Königsberg in 1807 and in 1816 has revealed that the texts had remained stable and free from major or significant revisions content-wise. This edition is even more consistent in its placement of the stress-marks than the one before. Efforts are made to keep up with the standard trend of spelling and language that prevailed in the official printed texts (grammars) of Prussian Lithuanian. It has been established that the making of the new edition of Rojaus Darelis published by the printing house of Johann Heinrich Post in Tilsit in 1816 relied on the Königsberg edition that had been released earlier that year. This is evidence in the morphological and lexical revisions that had been carried over. Structurally, the prayers in the 1816 Tilsit edition had remained intact. There were a little bit more orthography and syntactic differences compared to the 1816 Königsberg edition. It is probable that the Tilsit edition had had an effect on the preparation of Arndt’s prayers that were later featured in Wiſſokies Naujes Gieſmes arba Ewangelißki Pſalmai, a hymnal by Kristijonas Endrikis Mertikaitis (Tilsit, 1817). Nonetheless, it is the 1816 Königsberg edition (or the prior 1807 edition) that is to be considered the original source of the prayers published in Mertikaitis’s hymnal. It was in Wiſſokies Naujes Gieſmes arba Ewangelißki Pſalmai by Kristijonas Endrikis Mertikaitis (Tilsit, 1817) that Arndt’s prayers underwent the greatest extent of transformation. Contrary to the Königsberg or Tilsit editions mentioned in this article, this edition is teeming with differences on all sorts of levels: orthography, phonetics, morphology, lexis, word formation, and syntax. Analysis of the relationship between the sources shows that Mertikaitis’s hymnal did not try to follow the widely recognised grammatical usage. This unconventional approach most probably was the product of Mertikaitis’s savvy of the period language and lack of literacy. It is worth mentioning that Mertikaitis was not a man of academic or spiritual elite, but rather a vibrant preacher of the home-prayer service and schoolteacher who tended to pastoral care, matters of saving his own soul and those of the others as well as eternal life, someone who did not see making language more grammatically correct and standard-compliant as an important part of his earthly concern.

Problems of Rendering Architectural Terms in the Lithuanian translation of K. Frampton’s “Modern Architecture: A Critical History”

The article explores problems of translation of architectural terms from English into Lithuanian by analysing the terms found in K. Frampton’s book Modern Architecture: A Critical History and their translation into Lithuanian in Moderniosios architektūros kilmė ir pagrindai (translated by S. Kozulaitė). In order to identify architectural terms in the original text, a special term identification application was created and used. Thus, 132 English architectural terms were identified and semantic analysis of these terms as well as the analysis of their translation was conducted. It was established that the main problems of translating architectural terms were caused by the difficulty of their identification in the original text, their variation and synonymy in Lithuanian. The research results suggest that translation of some architectural terms from English into Lithuanian may be a challenge caused by the difficulty of establishing an equivalent term arising from the existing synonymity or variation of architectural terms in the Lithuanian language.

The Attitude of the Lithuanian Translation Market Participants towards Machine Translation and Post-editing

The article presents the results of the research project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania, the aim of which was to find out the attitude of Lithuanian translation market participants – companies and freelance translators – towards machine translation and post-editing. Currently, there is no objective information on the application of machine translation in companies providing translation services in Lithuania or the attitude of translators to machine translated texts and the challenges posed by post-editing as a service. There is also no information on the competences that need to be developed by translators and translation students so that they can adapt to this new reality and work successfully on the market. To reach this aim, two questionnaires were prepared: one for translation companies providing translation services (n1=42) and the other for translators (n2=61), and two surveys were carried out. A qualitative analysis of survey data confirmed that among market participants there is a strong belief that as machine translation programs progress, the importance of competences ensuring quality post-editing will grow rapidly. Among the most important competences for post-editing, both groups of respondents singled out knowledge of text linguistics, native and foreign language proficiency, and knowledge of the field of translation. However, the surveys have also revealed that at least one third of market participants have a negative view toward machine translation and see it as a threat to the quality of translation (agencies) and/or their jobs (translators). It is expected that the conducted research will contribute to the promotion of a more favourable attitude of translators to machine translation technologies and will encourage further research in post-editing in Lithuania.

Translation of Proper Nouns During Periods of Interwar and Soviet Lithuania: The Case of “The Tartuffe” by Molière

Summary Translation is not an isolated field of activity. It is closely related to the certain historical, political, ideological, socio-cultural, and sociolinguistic context of a country, i.e., translation depends on polysystems of a particular period of time. The article examines two different translations of Moliere’s play “The Tartuffe” into Lithuanian. “The Tartuffe” was first translated by Čiurlionienė-Kymantaitė in 1928 and later in 1967 by Churginas. This research is based on the polysystem theory of Even-Zohar and Toury’s theory of norms in translation. For the analysis of the translations of the theatre play, proper nouns were chosen as the object of the research. The analysis was done using comparative, linguistic descriptive and quantitative methods. These methods assisted in comparing decisions of translation used to translate proper nouns of “The Tartuffe”. Moreover, the analysis reveals the tradition of translation of proper nouns and the changes during the Interwar and Soviet Lithuania periods. In order to achieve the aim of the research, the objectives are as follows: to discuss the activity of translation as a part of the polysystems, to select and classify proper nouns of the research material according to translation decisions chosen by each translator, to review its validity and to discuss translation changes of Lithuanian translation tradition from the beginning to the end of XX century. After a comparative study of the translation of personal nouns in the research material, the author identifies and discusses five translation decisions: phonetic adaptation, omission, grammaticalization of the authentic form, replacement into another proper noun and actualization. Both translators mainly used phonetic adaptation, i.e., linguistic application of proper nouns. Looking towards both translations from the perspective of the social norms theory of Toury and the theoretical concept of polysystemical and binary oppositions of Even-Zohar, it can be assumed that translating Moliere’s play “The Tartuffe”, which belongs to the world literature canon, both translators (Čiurlionienė-Kymantaitė and Churginas) accepted the translation challenges of classical literature, understood the value of the work and the importance of maintaining the uniqueness of this theater play which belongs to Classicism. A comparative analysis of translation of the proper nouns allows identifying the dynamic formation of the tradition of proper nouns translation and its changes in Lithuania starting from quite diverse decisions of translation during the Interwar period, which was characterized by a free translation market, unrestricted selection of translations and their adaptation to the sociocultural and linguistic expectations of the readers, to the development of centralized and institutionalized norms in translation during the period of Soviet Lithuania, which was marked by unanimously applied rules of translation of the proper nouns and norms of the standard Lithuanian language. The results of the comparative research of the translation of the proper nouns allow us to confirm that the first translation, published in 1928, introduced Molière’s play to the Lithuanian culture of translation but became obsolete. Thus, almost forty years later, in 1967 there was a need for a new version of translation of “The Tartuffe” that would be adapted to a contemporary period in which cultural systematic knowledge and the usage of cultural elements and language differed from the first translation version.

Educational Activities of Wilhelm Andreas Rhenius (1753–1833) in Klaipėda and the First Lithuanian Translations of English Religious Literature

In the first half of the 19th century, the international interdenominational organization the Religious Tract Society in London provided financial support for the publication of religious books in the native languages of the people of the Kingdom of Prussia: German, Polish, Sorbian and Lithuanian. The branch of the Prussian Religious Tract Society established in Klaipėda, an important trading city of the time, took care of the translations of short books into Lithuanian along with their publishing and distribution. Wilhelm Andreas Rhenius (1753–1833), the inspector of the Bachman’s estate, the follower of the Moravian movement, who managed compilations, worked for the Klaipėda branch. This article aims to reveal the ties of Rhenius, the member of the Society, with the international organization in London, and his participation in educational activities in Klaipėda. Lithuanian translations of religious English texts patronized by the Religious Tract Society in London are also discussed, including an anonymous small volume book, The Warning Voice (Graudénimo Balsas, 1818), published in Tilsit, the Prussian Lithuania, in 4,000 copies, and the collected sermons Sixteen Short Sermons (Sźeßolika trumpi Kalbesei, 1820, Tilsit) by the British author Thomas Tregenna Biddulph (1763–1838), the minister of St. James’s Church in Bristol.