This book explores the impact of political bias on the translation of contemporary Russian fiction into English and its reception in the UK and US between 2008 and 2022.
This book explores the impact of political bias on the translation of contemporary Russian fiction into English and its reception in the UK and US between 2008 and 2022.
It also surveys the post-Ukraine invasion literary landscape and provides an overview of post-2022 tamizdat literary networks which publish Russophone literature outside of Russia and free of censorship. By analysing novels from six contemporary Russian authors situated across Russia’s political spectrum—from “liberal” to “nationalist”—and drawing on interviews with translators, publishers, editors, authors, and literary agents, this book reveals how political bias influences every stage of the translation process, from funding, commissioning, and translation itself, to marketing, and reception. It explores the politicised positioning of Russian literature in the Anglophone West and calls for the decolonisation of literature from former Soviet spaces.
Translating Novels from Putin’s Russia offers a nuanced analysis of the intersection between translation, politics, and publishing and is essential reading for researchers and students in Translation Studies, Publishing Studies, Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, and Literary Studies.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 International license.
Introduction
1. Liberal Authors: Sorokin, Ulitskaya and Shishkin
2.
Nationalist Authors: Prilepin, Elizarov and Senchin Part 1: The Market
3. The
Russian-English Literary Translation Market
4. Translation Networks and
Gatekeepers
5. Funding and Soft Power Part 2: Commissioning
6. Commissioning
Liberal Authors
7. Commissioning Nationalist Authors Part 3: Translation
8.
Translation, Editing, and Political Bias
9. When and How to Translate
10.
Ethics and Literary Translation Part 4: Marketing and Reception
11. Paratexts
12. Extratexts and Reception Part 5: Conclusion Literary Translation After
2022
13. Russian Literature and War
14. A Conclusion
Sarah Gear received her PhD from the University of Exeter, UK. She is a Russian and Translation Studies scholar, specializing in contemporary Russian literature and teaches Russian at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK.
