Abstract
Reviewed by: Frances Saddington, University of East Anglia, UK
The children’s literature of any country is deeply derived from its native culture but also contributes to the formation of that culture on a fundamental level. Generations of British children have been raised on tales of the magical Peter Pan, the enigmatic Mary Poppins and of poor confused Alice sliding down the rabbit hole. These literary staples have long been an inherent part of our culture, showing their influence everywhere from children’s films to everyday popular phrases. When these stories are exported to other countries, their familiar characters and reassuring landscapes suddenly find themselves displaced within a whole new world. What happens when Peter Pan is no longer in Neverland but the Soviet Union and Mary Poppins disappears not under the pavement but to Red Square? These are the questions asked by Elena Goodwin in her fascinating study, which explores the complex process through which British children’s literature has been translated into Russian and adopted into the literary canon of first the Soviet Union and then contemporary Russia.
Goodwin aims to explore how Russian translations ‘construct a literary narrative of England and its culture’ (2). She looks specifically at children’s books dating from the late Victorian era to the mid twentieth century, which project the vision of an imagined England as a place of gentlemen and ladies, the cosy English home and an idyllic rural landscape. Translations from the Soviet and post-Soviet periods are examined, with a view to understanding how ideology and politics affected the transfer of images of Englishness into the Russian texts. Goodwin also considers the selection process by which texts were chosen for translation and the reception of the books by Russian readers.
Initial chapters explain the history of literary translation in Russia and the historical context of Soviet and Russian children’s literature, which formed the receiving culture for the British books. We are introduced to key figures such as Samuil Marshak and Kornei Chukovsky, who are considered to be the fathers of Soviet children’s literature but who were also both resolute Anglophiles and talented translators. We learn how they paved the way for English children’s books to enter the country during the early years of Soviet rule and become a well-loved part of the literary scene.
The remaining chapters take specific British children’s classics and examine them in their new Russian clothes. In the case of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Goodwin ponders the difficulties of Soviet translators in rendering the character of Captain Hook, an old Etonian and true ‘English gentleman’. The language used in describing this character had to be altered as the theme of class division, which was implicit in the original text, could not be fully addressed by a Soviet writer who wished to remain ideologically correct. Mary Poppins was also a figure subject to change for ideological reasons. The mysterious nanny did not arrive in the Soviet Union until 1968, when translator Boris Zakhoder decided to subdue the more mystical elements of P. L. Travers’s novels in favour of the didactic role played by the character. Taking this approach allowed Zakhoder to comply with official ideas about the socialization of Soviet children, whilst still allowing a new set of readers to enjoy the popular character.
Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows gave translators the challenge of rendering the English rural landscape into a setting that young Soviet and Russian children could comprehend, when they had no point of reference for understanding this very particular environment. Goodwin compares the efforts of several translators who grappled with finding vocabulary to explain the hedgerow and the common, describing them as copses and plains or steppes. She describes the fine line that these writers faced in capturing the ‘mythical pastoral idyll’, whilst maintaining a level of accessibility for their young readership (151). In a similar spirit, an entertaining passage reveals how translators rendered Rat and Mole’s traditional Edwardian picnic fare into recognizable items of Russian cuisine. Items such as cold tongue, ham and beef proved simple enough but other items were more linguistically challenging. One translation from the 1990s conceded defeat over the rather old-fashioned potted meat and replaced it with chocolate slices and strawberry ice cream.
Translating England into Russian offers a nuanced and thought-provoking account of an intriguing subject and will be of interest to scholars working in many areas. Those studying translation or Russian literature will gain much from Goodwin’s careful research, as will those with a general interest in children’s literature. Historians will also find the book most illuminating, as it draws attention to subject matter which has often been overlooked, yet which reveals so much about the evolution of Soviet and Russian culture over a wide time period. If children’s literature acts as a looking glass for the wider world in which it sits, then Goodwin has shown that taking a journey through the looking glass and viewing it from another side is very worthwhile indeed.