Is translation child's play?
- 1765 and 1767 saw the publication of the German, respectively the English translation of Lomonosov's Kratkij rossijskij letopisec s rodosloviem (1760). For the very first time the European reading public could find out how Russians saw their own history. These translations testified to Russia's ascent both as an empire and as a part of European learned society, and were made by youths who wanted to further their own career and were neither professional translators nor historians. In this article, we argue that the translations of Lomonosov's Kratkij rossijskij letopisec should not be studied as an isolated act of cultural transfer but as an episode in a longer history of circulation of knowledge. We demonstrate the complexity of this circulation by reassessing the 'quality' of these translations and positioning them in that longer history of circulation of knowledge by analysing the distribution of historical concepts (Begriffe) in Lomonosov's original and its translations.
Author details: | Wim CoudenysORCiD, Vladislava WarditzORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.13173/ws.66.1.46 |
ISSN: | 0043-2520 |
ISSN: | 2193-5475 |
Title of parent work (English): | Die Welt der Slaven : internationale Halbjahresschrift für Slavistik |
Subtitle (English): | Circulation of knowledge in Lomonosov's Kratkij rossijskij letopisec s rodosloviem (1760) and its translations |
Publisher: | Harrassowitz |
Place of publishing: | Wiesbaden |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2020/12/02 |
Publication year: | 2021 |
Release date: | 2023/11/10 |
Tag: | 18th century; Lomonosov; Russia; circulation of knowledge; conceptual history; historiography; translation |
Volume: | 66 |
Issue: | 1 |
Number of pages: | 24 |
First page: | 46 |
Last Page: | 69 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Slavistik |
DDC classification: | 8 Literatur / 89 Andere Literaturen / 890 Literaturen anderer Sprachen |
Peer review: | Referiert |