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Рукописный перевод и формирование светского политического языка в России (1700–1760-е)
The author in the chapter shows that until the 1760s almost all the translated “political” literature in Russia was distributed in manuscripts. Obviously the interest in political writings of one of the commissioners of translations of that type of literature, Prince Dmitrii Mikhailovich Golitsin, explains to some extent the abundance of the copies of handwritten translations in Russia at that time, but the case of Golitsin also clearly highlights the interest for this literature among the Russian aristocracy and the leading place of the manuscript book in its distribution. It is clear that this manuscript form of translations cannot be explained solely by the fear of censorship. There is another reason: the importance of the manuscript tradition at the time and the relatively narrow circle of readers of this literature. The author rightfully wonders why it was necessary at all to commission a translation, when many of the aristocrats who did so were capable of reading political treatises in their original language? The reason was probably the need to see hard-to-define concepts expressed in their native language and thus to “appropriate” for themselves the text of the treatise, making it their own and more understandable. In the second part of the article author analyzes the main features of the transfer of concepts and translation “modes” that have been developed in Russia. Within the framework of the period that he discusses in the article (1700-1760s), the author distinguishes three periods in the development of translation practices, which are related, on the one hand, to the gradual development of literary language, and on the other hand, to a change in the approach to the translation of terms, from «foreignization» to «domestication». He also shows that choice of language by the translator (Church-Slavonic, hybrid, business and bureaucratic language) depends directly on the education he received. Another important conclusion is that precisely in the translations, not only in those of political literature of course, a new Russian language had been formed. This language was simple and clear and at the same time abandoned the practice of calquing and transliterating foreign expressions and concepts that had been a striking feature of Russian translations, for example in the Petrine period.
In book
