I am Risking: Translating the Work of Maria Voskresenskaya

Translation is a critical field of study in the context of international colonialism. Historically, colonizing nations have restricted colonized people’s access to language—through limiting their ability to learn indigenous languages, study indigenous literature, and overall participate in linguistically-oriented aspects of indigenous life—to hamper their ability to form interpersonal connections that could resist colonial and imperialist control. This unequal power dynamic has persisted to the present day, notably in the form of neo-colonial dynamics such as those seen between Russia and the “less developed” or “third-world” (themselves restrictive labels) non-Slavic (NS) member nations of the USSR. Thus, following the collapse of such political institutions, translation promotes the decolonization of indigenous NS peoples through the intercultural promotion of their literature. 

Within the scope of this final project, such promotion is exemplified by the translation of Maria Voskresenskaya’s 1990 poetry book I am Risking! (Riskuyu!). More specifically, the goal is to translate the first seven poems in the first section of the book, titled I Love Gold (Ya zoloto lyublyu) [1]. The poems discuss Voskresenskaya’s career in the sciences as well as prominent historical and anecdotal events which she considers central to her life. The original texts and annotated translations of these poems can be found at the end of this paper. The source text (ST) was originally written in Russian due to existing cultural pressure on Voskresenskaya to conform to Slavic/Russian influence, although the text features a distinct NS cultural focus on Tajikistan and Crimea through narrative and stylistic elements. The text has no preceding existing English translation, making this project the first time which it has, based on available knowledge, been presented to a non-Russian-speaking audience [2]. 

To understand the significance of Voskresenskaya’s work, one must first understand the context in which it was written. The poems in I am Risking! were written over the course of the poet’s life, and compiled and published later [2]; as such, the themes within them are impacted by the entirety of Voskresenskaya’s lived experience as a resident of USSR-controlled Tajikistan and Crimea. Politically, this promotes ideologies such as socialism and collectivism [3], seen in her patriotic calls for her “land of birth” [1]; socio-economically, this influences both Voskresenskaya’s path to higher education and her glorification of the working class, extolling the virtues of geological science just as she praises the work of the miners who enable it [1]. This juxtaposition of overall patriotism and independence, academic individualism and physical unity, serves to portray nationalism as both a unifying and dividing force [3], with the individual and nation facing the collective and federation. The aforementioned political and socio-economic factors converge to promote a cultural emphasis on bravery, perseverance, and sacrifice in a broader societal context [3]. Voskresenskaya also reveals a distinct desire for independence and non-utilitarian joy in a personal context, even as she promotes unity in labor. 

Based on the limited available biographical information [2], Voskresenskaya’s interpersonal life is significant to these poems as well. The poet worked primarily as a geological engineer, with her scientific background lending her both a perspective on “higher-class” academia and “lower-class” manual labor such as mining. She also had a personal perspective on war and armed conflict, as she moved throughout her life due to her husband’s military career and was ultimately widowed by it. Her survival through world and local war—including both world wars, as a child and adult—allowed her to further reflect on the necessity of military activity and resistance in the face of oppression. 

The complexities of Voskresenskaya’s background make it necessary to develop a novel method of translation, combining word-for-word and sense-for-sense strategies to attempt to “decolonize” the NS aspects within the poetry from Russian influence. This leads to the establishment of a three-pronged approach. The first step is a word-for-word translation which provides the most literal translation of the ST, to preserve the poems’ sound through cognates and loanwords and honor existing naming conventions through transliteration. The latter is central to decolonizing the ST, as Voskresenskaya elected to use the NS names of locations and proper nouns—preserving this aspect thus preserves explicit NS cultural references in the ST. The second step is one of metric adjustment, where the word-for-word translation from the first step is modified to match the syllable counts of the ST while also making sure the word order, preserved from the ST, is either legible or adjusted to be so. This step most often sees the addition of (non-novel content) phrases not present in the ST, which lengthen the English translation without fundamentally changing the ST’s meaning. The third step is a sense-for-sense retranslation of the initial translation, allowing for some deviations from the structure of the ST, to match its rhyme scheme and improve the translations’ flow and aesthetic appeal. 

This translation strategy proves successful in creating poetically comparable word-for-word and sense-for-sense translations of the ST. A clear breakdown of the different steps can be seen in the first, untitled poem. The initial word-for-word translation preserves the NS references to “Pamiran ovryngs” and “Irtyshan” waves (line 7), exemplifying NS culture over Russian culture. The second step sees the inclusion of non-novel phrases in lines 3, 11, and 13; notably, the third line includes the change from “seeker” to “risk-seek[er]” to match the syllable count of the ST line and clarify what the speaker’s purpose is in the poem. Word order adjustments are also made in lines 2, 3, 6 and 7 to clarify the text’s meaning. The third step minimizes the above issues, introducing minor inexact translations throughout the text (lines 3, 9, 11, and 14). Overall, however, the translation maintains the sound, meter, and rhyme scheme of the original poem. Similar breakdowns for the other poems’ translations can be seen at the end of this paper.

Thus, this translation method finds justification in its stylistic preservation and contextual significance. Stylistically, the work allows non-Russian-speaking readers to appreciate the aesthetics of Russian/NS poetry often lost in translation, such as the rigid rhyme scheme and irregular meter. It also maintains the existing dynamic contrast in Voskresenskaya’s stylistic choices in the ST, especially regarding foreignized NS proper nouns—the NS names now contrast with the initially Russian and now English remaining text. This idea of intentional otherness cements the distinction between NS and Russian cultures, promoting the independence and decolonization of the former. Here, stylistic impact blends into contextual significance—separating NS and Russian/English aspects allows readers to visualize the Russian colonizer’s oppressive impact on NS nations and cultures. It is important to note, however, that this technique also preserves Russian cultural influence on colonized’ nations artistic and scientific expression through the poems’ style and subject matter. Equally so, it preserves Voskresenskaya’s own desire for national independence through individual artistic expression, which exists both within and outside of the political context of the USSR. 

The translations’ development thus functions as a multifaceted pathway of re- and de-colonization of NS culture from Russian to English as the initial NS : Russian translation, conducted by Voskresenskaya, becomes a Russian: English translation through this project. The first step’s translation of the NS : Russian ST into English is a form of both Russian : English colonization and NS : English recolonization—the NS concepts in the ST change hands from Russian to English as the former is subsumed under the larger global influence of the latter. However, NS influence in the ST is preserved through NS : English transliteration, removing the “Russian middleman” from overt cultural references; this decolonizes the ST from Russian influence. Subsequently, in the second and third steps, the re-emphasis of Russian poetic features (rhyme, meter, etc.) functions as NS : Russian decolonization, as NS and Russian come to be equal before English. As such, the literal translation between Russian and English, with NS transliteration, becomes an emblem of metaphorical translation between the sociopolitical and cultural dynamics of Tajikistan, Crimea, Russia, and English-speaking nations. 

This view of translation as colonizing from one language to another to restore the prominence of the initial colonized language or culture is supported by the idea of translation as a hermeneutic motion as defined by George Steiner [4]. The first step of hermeneutic motion—trust in the significance of the ST—is implicit in this case: one must inherently believe that the Russian ST maintains NS cultural significance, even based on limited evidence. As described above, the second step in the motion (aggression within translation) manifests itself in the recolonization of NS sentiment from Russian into English (the first step of this project’s translation). The third step, incorporation of the ST into the translation, is seen in the selective highlighting of more central or “neutral” Russian aspects of the ST, such as rhyme scheme and meter, which affect the aesthetic effect of the poetry but not necessarily the NS concepts. Restitution of the ST, the final step of hermeneutic motion, is achieved when NS elements are reinforced within the recolonized translation through the preservation of transliterated elements and reduction of Russian dominance in favor of English. 

The translation method developed in this paper also aligns closely with postcolonial foreignizing theory [5]. The NS : Russian ST establishes foreignization, with NS culture being othered through naming conventions and promoted by the subject matter as described above. Subsequently, Russian : English colonization through direct translation diminishes Russian influence, while NS : English recolonization reaffirms a colonial hierarchy which prioritizes Western languages and ideals over non-Western ones, even as Slavic languages dominate NS ones in the non-West. Finally, NS : Russian decolonization is achieved by usurping both Russian and English influence—the transliterations and themes of the poems persevere through two rounds of translation and adjustment. The successful implementation of this method, by extension, acts as proof of concept of post-Soviet translation, reversing the “totalitarian translation” described by Daniele Monticelli in 2011 [6]. The equalization of Russian and NS culture and influence before those of English reinstate the balance between “NS literature” and “Russian literature in/with NS.” Effectively, the translation of the ST becomes both a unique work reflecting NS values and a work equally influenced by Russian due to its forced diminishment. This devaluation allows the ST to recover from an enforced focus on Soviet themes and cultural ideals, as seen in the ambiguous patriotism and emphasis on labor throughout the poems. Separately, the maintenance of transliteration reaffirms the sparse NS cultural influences within the heavily colonized and recolonized work. The (fairly minor) heightening of NS aspects as Russian aspects are overcome through English retranslation thus serves to liberate the text from its initial colonial context. 

It is important to note, however, that this approach towards translation raises as many concerns as it seemingly negates. The parallel with hermeneutic motion in particular shines doubt on the trust of the ST, namely through the idea of Voskresenskaya as a reliable Russian-NS intermediary. Voskresenskaya’s ethnicity is either unknown or unclear [2], raising the potential for her perspective on colonized NS culture to be at least partially invalid. As she may, in her life, have access to the perspective of both the colonized (NS) and colonizer (Russian) based on her ethnicity, she could potentially subconsciously bias herself and her work towards the latter group. The uncertain bias is reaffirmed by her limited biography: the extent to which Voskresenskaya agreed with Soviet culture is unknown [2]. This raises the question of the sufficiency of lived experience immersed within the colonized NS culture—does a Russian person raised in an NS environment experience the same degree of colonization as an NS individual, and thus push back against it equally as much? 

Voskresenskaya’s unknown ethnic identity also opens the door to the possibility of an overemphasis on Russian culture in the event that the first step of hermeneutic motion proves false. This project did not take into account NS-English cognates and loanwords that might be present in the text due to limited knowledge, and thus inherently prioritized Russian-English cognates and loanwords in the first step of translation. As such, only expressly labeled NS terms and phenomena were preserved—there could potentially be more such terms which were lost due to the translator’s lack of knowledge. This question of insufficiency extends to the use of transliteration to preserve the NS terms that the translator was aware of. Because this project employs a novel method of translation, there is no prior literature to reveal whether transliteration is significant enough to decolonize the ST, or whether the product is instead equally English-colonized NS and Russian. While the NS aspects are relatively decolonized due to the de-emphasis of Russian aspects, they also lose a sense of priority over Russian relative to the few imposed English phenomena in the translation. It could therefore be argued that this potential equivalence negates the decolonization of NS aspects because the latter is not extensive enough to grant NS phenomena greater priority over Russian ones. 

This potential failure at decolonization calls into question the viability of recolonization as a tool to achieve the former. The lack of experience on the part of the translator, as well as the lack of prior work by others with this translation technique, increase the probability of the technique’s failure despite its qualification through situational application and several post-colonial translation theories as described above. By extension, it is unclear whether the NS language and influence on the ST is meaningfully decolonized via recolonization of Russian aspects into English—if NS transliteration is insufficient to decolonize the text, then it is likely that Russian suppression is not, either. This broadly ties back to the idea of the colonial hierarchy and its upholding through translation. The colonizing of a colonizer does not necessarily mean the decolonizing of the initial colonized; in order to truly decolonize the NS, one must find a way to remove the colonial hierarchy entirely. This can only be made possible through the application of this translation method to more diverse and extensive texts, refining the methodology to render equal not only NS languages and Russian, but English as well. 

Overall, it becomes clear that the translation technique developed within this project is a viable avenue for translating poetry in a way that preserves both style and sense, an aspect which has historically proved difficult to achieve. The application of this technique to Voskresenskaya’s work results in minimal deviations from the ST and reemphasizes NS features in a linguistic space (previously) dominated by Russian colonialism. This success, while limited, reaffirms the technique’s applicability in nuanced situations of neo-colonialism between Russia and the “third-world” nations of the former USSR, adding to its “proof of concept” through adherence to the post-colonial theories of hermeneutic motion, foreignizing translation theory, and post-Soviet translation theory. While there are several questions raised about the efficacy of this technique, they are only opportunities to explore post-colonial translation further and adapt this technique to suit the needs of an increasingly independent world. This translation of I am Risking! is the first translation of its kind—both with this technique and of Voskresenskaya’s work—and is thus a crucial step in more consistently decolonizing translation, lending credence and value to NS states as they establish themselves on the world stage.