Translation Studies

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Institutionalized intermediates: Conceptualizing

Soviet practices of indirect literary translation

Susanna Witt

To cite this article: Susanna Witt (2017) Institutionalized intermediates: Conceptualizing

Soviet practices of indirect literary translation, Translation Studies, 10:2, 166-182, DOI:
10.1080/14781700.2017.1281157

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2017.1281157

Published online: 15 Feb 2017.

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TRANSLATION STUDIES, 2017
VOL. 10, NO. 2, 166–182
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2017.1281157

Institutionalized intermediates: Conceptualizing Soviet

practices of indirect literary translation
Susanna Witt*
Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
In the Soviet Union, practices of indirect literary translation, History of translation; Soviet
particularly the use of interlinear intermediates, were institutionalized Union; translation practices;
in the early 1930s through special terminology, specific administrative indirect translation;
intermediate; interlinear;
treatment within the literary apparatus, and educational efforts.
institutional aspects of
Such practices continued until the end of the Soviet era, but were translation
intensely debated and criticized, rendering problems of indirect
translation both visible and articulated in a unique way. Drawing
on archival sources, this article presents an overview of such
issues, taking into consideration the heretofore scant attention
given the subject in both Western and Russian scholarship.
Conceptualizing the massive Soviet experience in the field, it aims
at providing new perspectives on the phenomenon of indirect
translation.

Introduction
Although indirect translation has been – and still is – practised widely in situations of
intercultural exchange around the world, there is one context that stands out because
of the systematic way in which intermediate texts were used as a translational tool for a
period of more than 60 years. I have in mind the Soviet Union, where such practices
were an indispensable part of the large-scale translation project involved in the cre-
ation of a Soviet literature. The institutional and planned character of these activities,
as well as the large volume of texts processed in this way until the end of the Soviet era,
distinguish the period from earlier epochs in Russian cultural history, even if indirect
translation has always played a significant role, especially in the earlier stages (Zaborov
1963; Zaborov 2011). During the eighteenth century, English literature reached Russian
readers via French and German intermediates. French was the most prominent of the
mediating languages until the mid-nineteenth century, rendering, for example,
Madame de Staël the most important agent in “acquainting the reading Russia with
the works of the great German poets” (Zaborov 1963, 71). Toward the end of the nine-
teenth century, indirect translation from Western languages became rare, although
smaller literatures such as Dutch and Scandinavian were still often translated from
German editions.

CONTACT Susanna Witt [email protected]

*
Present address: Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages, Finnish, Dutch and German, Stockholm University, Stockholm,
Sweden.
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 167

Indirect translation in pre-revolutionary Russia was thus largely a matter of “relay

translation” as defined by Dollerup (2000) – that is, when the mediating text is a work
in its own right with its own target audience. It also corresponds in an uncomplicated
way to the standard definition of indirect translation provided by Kittel and Frank,
involving three different langugages: “any translation based on a source (or sources)
which is itself a translation into a language other than the language of the original or
the target language” (1991, 3). Three languages were involved when Calderón was trans-
lated into Russian via German in the 1820s, or Walter Scott from French (which was the
rule up to the 1830s) (Zaborov 1963, 67, 70). Similar examples may be cited from Soviet
times as well, the mediating language generally being Russian – a fact reflecting the status
of this language as a lingua franca of the Union. These cases were principally of three types.
First, works of world literature would typically be translated into the many languages of
the Union via Russian translations, as when Shakespeare, Defoe, Dickens and Schiller
were translated into Georgian from Russian editions (Zaborov 2011, 2071). Second, the
“literatures of the peoples of the USSR” (an administrative-bureaucratic category compris-
ing all the “non-Russian” literatures) were, almost without exception, translated into other
European languages via Russian editions. Examples include the Armenian Vakhtang
Ananian, who was translated into Czech, Polish and English from Russian (Zaborov
2011, 2071). Third, and finally, “literatures of the peoples of the USSR” were frequently
translated into the languages of the other peoples of the Union from Russian versions
(Witt 2013b, 165).
Only a minority of the indirect literary translations produced in the Soviet Union,
however, were of a kind that falls neatly into conventional categories. The most wide-
spread indirect practice was instead the use of intermediate interlinears, so-called
podstrochniki (something located under the line). Here, the crude intermediate (the pod-
strochnik) was in the same language as the target text, rendering the entire transfer oper-
ation a translational hybrid involving an interlingual as well as an intralingual step
(Jakobson 1959, 233). Typically, the two steps were carried out separately with no
contact occurring between the respective agents. This was partly due to the significant geo-
graphical distance between centre and periphery in the Union: the podstrochnik was often
produced locally in a Union republic and forwarded to a final translator based in Moscow
or Leningrad. In this way, for example, the Dagestani bard Suleiman Stal’skii was trans-
lated in the 1930s by poets Nikolai Ushakov and Semen Lipkin, who received their inter-
mediates “through a number of instances”,1 thus precluding communication with the
producer of the podstrochnik and the author (or alleged author) of the ultimate source
text. This feature distinguishes the Soviet case from most related practices that can be
found elsewhere; for example, collaborations between (monolingual) poets and native
speakers resulting in joint translations which are not uncommon in the anglophone
world. It is, therefore, this particular practice and the problems related to it that are in
focus for the present article, which builds on and develops my earlier research on the
phenomenon, viewed as “a shorthand of empire” (Witt 2013a, 159).2
Part and parcel of the official system of Soviet literature, the podstrochnik in fact
enabled this very literature to emerge as a multinational entity. In view of the large
number of languages spoken within the USSR – approximately 150 at the end of the
Soviet period (Grenoble 2003, 2) – and the lack of corresponding linguistic competence
among translators, intermediate interlinears were accepted as a necessary aid in
168 S. WITT

translations from the “nationalities languages” into Russian and also between these
languages themselves (frequently with the use of a Russian interlinear). They were
common in translation of literatures from outside the USSR as well, from not only
distant languages such as Chinese, Korean and Japanese, but also European ones such
as Hungarian, Finnish and even some Slavic languages. The method was used by well-
known and lesser-known translators alike. Among the famous authors who practised it
were Boris Pasternak (cf. Witt 2015), Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Zabolotskii and
Marina Tsvetaeva.
Since (in)directness of translation is a parameter not often reflected in bibliographies (a
general problem, cf. Ringmar 2007, 7f.), indirect evidence has to be sought in order to cal-
culate the extension of the phenomenon. We know, for example, that in 1956, 67% of all
fiction literature issued in the USSR consisted of translations (Pechat’ SSSR, 88) and that
nearly half of this originated within the Union, an “overwhelming majority” of which was
produced with the help of intermediate interlinears (Antokol’skii, Auezov, and Ryl’skii
1955, 12). At approximately the same time, in 1958, the Soviet Union was awarded a
gold medal at the World Exhibition in Brussels as the country with the greatest number
of published translations (Bagno and Kazanskii 2011, 2088).
In the Soviet-Russian context, intralingual (final) translators relying on interlinears
came to be regarded – and to regard themselves – unequivocally as translators. These
circumstances, arguably, contributed to the obscurity of the practice, which also
involved near-total anonymity for the producers of the interlingual translation, the
so-called podstrochnikisty. There is, however, one valuable source of information avail-
able; namely, documentation originating from within the Soviet literary apparatus.
Although the use of intermediate interlinears was accepted and tolerated as a “tempor-
ary solution”, it was intensely debated and criticized throughout the Soviet period. Pro-
blems of indirect translation were thereby articulated and made explicit in a unique
way. Drawing on such archival material, this article provides an overview of issues fig-
uring in the administrative treatment of podstrochnik translation and examines the
ways the practice was conceptualized by the various agents of translation (Milton
and Bandia 2009) at the time.
If practices of indirect translation generally have drawn relatively little scholarly atten-
tion, this is especially true for translation carried out with the help of interlinears. Evalu-
ating entries dealing with indirect translation in the de Gruyter Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies, Birgit Schultze notes that “interlinear translation, notwithstanding
its frequency and geographical extensions, is largely ignored in the entries” (2014, 517).
In the Russian context, Mikhail Gasparov remarked that
we have talked and written a lot about the interlinear, but we have studied it little … .
[T]ranslations from interlinears have been done and are still carried out in enormous quan-
tities but there are almost no theoretical observations as to the practice. (2001, 361)

In one of the few articles on the topic, Galina Vanechkova argues that
the work of the mediator preparing an interlinear – an extremely important and honorable
labor – should enter the discipline of translation studies and find its place in studies dealing
with the transfer of an original work into another cultural and linguistic milieu from the
point of view of communication theory, comparative literature, psychology, sociology, and
language. (1978, 11)
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 169

In the following, focus will be largely on the sociology of podstrochnik translation, invol-
ving the institutions, procedures and individual agents concerned. Particular attention will
be devoted to issues of control and education on the part of the Soviet literary apparatus as
reflected in the archival documentation, as well as to the various types of translational
agency made possible through the practice. As will be seen, throughout the material the
ontological and epistemological problems actualized by this specific form of indirect trans-
lation surface. By bringing in the voices of individual agents, I also hope to contribute to
the historical visibility of translators.

Institutional framework
Literary translation in the Soviet Union was part of a larger project of culture planning
(Even Zohar 2008) on several levels: the creation of “Soviet literature” as a canon of repre-
sentative expressions of nationalities cultures and selected works of world literature, and
the creation of nationalities cultures as indigenous canons involving translations from
Russian as well as world literature (Witt 2011). Thus, translation was also part of Soviet
nationalities policies, a fact reflected in the institutional infrastructure of Soviet literature.
Within the Union of Soviet Writers (established in 1934), translational issues were
managed at both the Translators’ Section and the Nationalities Commission.3 Another
institution involved in the production and control of intermediate interlinears was the
Soviet Academy of Sciences, which conducted such work at the level of its local branches,
especially in the republics of Central Asia.
A virtual boom of translation from nationalities literature took place in the second half
of the 1930s, following Maksim Gorky’s speech at the First Congress of Soviet Writers in
August 1934, where he emphasized the need for such translations in the process of “orga-
nizing the all-union literature as a whole” (Pervyi s’’ezd, 680).4 Gorky also initiated a
periodical anthology to showcase the literature of the various republics in Russian trans-
lation. Later turned into a journal, this publication, Druzhba narodov (Peoples’ friendship)
was an important outlet for translations mediated by interlinears. It was issued by the State
Publishing House for Literature (GIKhL, later Khudozhestvennaia literatura) which
included a department for the “literatures of the peoples of the USSR” with a significant
output of books by nationalities authors in Russian translation. In addition, the newspa-
pers of the time frequently carried translated “non-Russian” literary material, also pro-
duced mainly with the help of interlinears. The production was intimately linked to the
dynamics of literary politics as expressed, for example, in the many jubilees of various
authors and symbolically important works that were to place them firmly in the canon
of Soviet culture. In 1940–41, for example, there were jubilees in connection with the fol-
lowing occasions: the 800th anniversary of the Kalmuck epos Dzhangar, the 500th birth-
day of the Uzbek (Chagatay) author Navoi, the 800th birthday of the Azerbaijani (in fact,
Persian) poet Nizami, the 100th birthday of the Georgian writer Tsereteli, the 50th birth-
day of the Chuvash author Ivanov, the 75th anniversary of the death of Ukrainian author
Franko and the 75th birthday of his compatriot Kotsiubyn’skyi, and the 80th birthday of
the Kirgiz writer Satylganov, as well as jubilees for the Turkmen folk poet Kimine, the
Kirgiz Takhtabul and the Dagestani Tsadasa – all involving organizational efforts, includ-
ing translation issues, on the part of the Union of Soviet Writers.5 Another factor prompt-
ing the need for such translations (generally produced from interlinears) were the festivals
170 S. WITT

featuring various nationalities cultures (dekady) which were held regularly in Moscow and
Leningrad in the 1930s and 1940s (Witt 2011, 164f.).
A central phenomenon when it comes to translation from intermeditate interlinears in
the USSR were the bards – representatives of oral folk traditions mainly in Central Asia
and the Caucasus – who were appropriated by the Soviet literary apparatus for propaganda
purposes. The most well-known of these figures, the Kazakh folk poet Dzhambul, has been
cited by Gideon Toury (2005) as an instance of pseudotranslation.6 Toury’s claim that
“nobody has ever encountered that man’s poems in praise of the regime in anything
but Russian” (ibid., 14) is, however, inaccurate, if only because there exist a number of
Dzhambul editions in the Kazakh language (Witt 2011, 160). In actual fact, the term
“pseudotranslation” does not quite apply to cases such as Dzhambul or the equally
famous Dagestani (Lezgian) bard Suleiman Stal’skii. As evidenced in the archival material,
these cases (and other similar ones) featured a complex set of transfer operations, includ-
ing the use of interlinear intemediates, which resulted in a series of texts with various onto-
logical status. After the appearance of Dzhambul (then aged 90) on the literary stage in
1936, an institutional framework was set up to facilitate his activities: a secretariat, a
service apparatus and a bureau of interlinear translators.7 The (supposedly) illiterate
bard was assigned personal secretaries, well-known Kazakh poets, who were to write
down what he composed or performed on topical political themes as well as material
from his earlier pre-revolutionary production (purportedly reaching back to the 1880s).
From these texts, interlinear translations were made into Russian, either by the Kazakh
poets themselves or by others, after which an intralingual translation was produced by
a Russian translator (a “poet-translator”, as this category was designated). A better term
than pseudotranslation would perhaps be “constellational production”, since this was a
process involving several agents, often in fixed constellations consisting of a native
agent of transcription, an interlinear translator and a final Russian translator. The end
product, in turn, often became a source text for further translations into other nationalities
languages, and, after World War II, into the languages of countries belonging to the
Eastern Bloc. This was, of course, the case only for the most famous of the bards, such
as Dzhambul and Stal’skii. The emergence of this kind of literature produced a significant
corpus of translational lore, anecdotal conversation pieces with a broad circulation in
intelligentia discourse during Soviet times. The details of such practices and their actual
extent are, however, possible to reconstruct through archival material.
Although the bardic literature was an extreme example of complex mediation in the
Soviet literary system, many of its constitutive features were part of indirect practices in
other contexts of nationalities translation. As I have argued elsewhere (Witt 2013a,
160), the authenticity of the various texts produced (which, obviously, may legitimately
be questioned in many cases) is of lesser relevance from the point of view of translation
scholarship; the main interest here is represented by the varying conceptions of translation
and translation practices that are revealed as the literary apparatus tried to manage and
control the production.

The interlinear intermediate and agents of interlinear translation

The ontological and epistemological problems related to the use of interlinear translation
have been touched upon by Galina Vanechkova (1978), cited above. Assuming that a case
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 171

of direct translation may be represented by the simplified scheme O – I –T (original –

interpretation – translation), Vanechkova visualizes interlinear translation as O – I – IL
– I –T (original, interpretation, interlinear, interpretation, translation). However, this
scheme, she argues, does not express the complexity of the change that occurs. Here,
the “process of apperception [appertseptsiia]”, involving somebody else’s experience,
which may explain a differing interpretation and various translational displacements,
gets significantly more complicated as it proceeds through a mediator:
If we take into account the claim made by scholars of aesthetics that a work of art becomes an
artifact at the moment of its perception [vospriiatie], and that an active interrelationship
between author and reader is indispensable for the artifact to come into being and to have
an influence on the subject (in our case the translator), it becomes clear that this moment
will be deformed if a prose version is used to render a work of poetry. In this case the
work is an artifact for the author of the interlinear while the [final] translator is dealing
with a semifinished product that is a work of a totally different quality. The latter is expected
to turn this auxiliary translation back into an original, to create an integrated work of art
capable of realizing itself as an artifact. (Ibid., 12)

Vanechkova’s understanding of the aesthetic process and the realization of the “artifact” in
relation to interlinear translation (apparently informed by Prague structuralists Jan
Mukařovský and Felix Vodička, although they are not explicitly invoked) leads her to a
principal denial of the possibilities of such translation. Since the aesthetic potential of
the ultimate source text resides in its “particular correlation (or lack of correlation)
between rhythm, rhyme, images, content”, the final translator finds him/herself deprived
of the “emotional influence” that affects the first translator – the most important factor for
“the emergence of a high quality translation” (1978, 13). However, Vanechkova remarks,
such a complex mediation is of significant theoretical interest. Therefore, “it is indispen-
sable that the podstrochnik be accessible to scholars studying the translation process and
translation as such” (ibid., 12).
Expressing a source-oriented ethos, Vanechkova’s analysis may productively be related
to Gideon Toury’s discussion of “the two senses of ‘literary translation’ ” (1995, 168).
Toury makes a distinction between “the translation of literary texts” and “literary trans-
lation”, respectively, where the former is “the translation of texts which are regarded as
literary in the source culture … where the focus is on the retention (or better still, recon-
struction) of the source text’s internal web of relationships”, while the latter is “the trans-
lation of a text … in such a way that the product can be acceptable as literary to the
recipient culture” (ibid., 168). Thus, none of the steps in the complex act of translation
carried out with the help of an intermediate interlinear can be designated “a translation
of a literary text” in Toury’s sense. The making of the podstrochnik from the ultimate
source text would at best constitute a “linguistically-motivated translation”, “yielding a
product which is well-formed in terms of the target syntax, grammar and lexicon, even
if it does not fully conform to any target model of text formation” (ibid., 171).8 The
final step of the operation constitutes almost by definition a “literary translation”, invol-
ving “the imposition of conformity conditions … to models and norms which are deemed
literary at the target end” (ibid., 171). This aspect is emphasized in the Russian standard
designation of the agents of this final step as poety-perevodchiki, poet-translators.
Vanechkova, a Russian scholar who left the Soviet Union in 1954 and pursued a career
at Charles University in Prague, does not comment on the practice in relation to the Soviet
172 S. WITT

experience, but her sharp rejection of it is arguably polemical. Her only (implicit) reference
to the USSR is a critique of inaccuracies in Konstantin Simonov’s translation of a poem by
the Czech modernist Vítěslav Nezval, made from an anonymous interlinear (Vanechkova
1978, 12). The practice arguably became a signature of Soviet power, drawing attention to
its colonialist aspects (cf. Witt 2013a, 179).
In the Soviet treatment of podstrochnik translation, attitudes fluctuated over time, but
total rejection was never an option. Various aspects of the problems pinpointed by
Vanechkova surfaced regularly within the institutions mentioned above and were articu-
lated largely in terms of professionalization and politics. The first serious discussions of the
podstrochnik practice took place within the translators’ corporation in 1933 as an issue
related to the professionalization of the “cadres” in view of the imminent inclusion of
their organization into the Union of Soviet Writers, which was to replace all previous
literary organizations in 1934 (Witt 2013b; Zemskova 2013).
Documentation concerning the registration and assessment of translators at this stage
reveals an unwillingness to characterize even the people working with the help of inter-
linears as translators. A 1934 report states that “their work can not be called translational
and they need the appropriate education”.9 Educational efforts were called for also in con-
nection with the producers of the interlinears, the podstrochnikisty. They made up a
specific administrative category within the Translators’ Section, the working plan for
which in 1934 foresees registration of these persons and assessment of their knowledge
of Russian as well as “a series of lectures about the technique of making interlinear inter-
mediates”, and the “issuing of an instruction on how to make the interlinear intermedi-
ate”.10 Howerver, the low level of education on the part of these agents as well as their
“randomness” were lasting concerns within the literary apparatus.
The changing attitude toward the use of interlinear intermediates may be illustrated
by the administrative treatment of the case of author-turned-translator Ezra Levontin.11
His application for membership of the Union of Soviet Writers was turned down in 1935
on the grounds that “literary processing [oformlenie] of an interlinear cannot be
regarded a translation”.12 In 1938, however, Levontin’s candidature was approved,
along with that of other translators working mainly with the help of interlinears.13
This time was the peak of “nationalities translation” in the USSR. Although there had
been hopes that language courses would eliminate the need for intermediates, the
results to this end were meagre, and efforts were eventually concentrated mainly on
improving and controlling the intermediate practices.14 Within the Translators’
Section criticism was occasionally voiced – “Comrades, of course there are moments
when we fall short, but let us not make a norm or working principle out of it”15 – but
there were obvious grounds for playing down the significance of language competence
in view of widening professional (and material) perspectives. As argued at the same
meeting (in 1934) by the poet Osip Kolychev, who became one of the translators of
the Dagestani bard Suleiman Stal’skii,
[h]ow often isn’t it that a comrade has excellent command of the [ultimate source] language,
but the translation is such that you want to cry. It’s better that he doesn’t know any language
at all, but is able to give us real poetry. It is not enough to know a language, you have to
possess the specific talent of a translator, that is, you have to discern the talent of the
other, a higher poetical judgment. … I think that the term translation has become
antiquated.16
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 173

The ontological status of the interlinear intermediate, however, continued to be a source of

uncertainty and unease, a fact reflected in the rich flora of metaphors applied to this
indirect practice in translational discourse over the period. Such translating is compared
to a variety of activities implying frustration, such as “casting bullets from clay”, “using a
plough instead of a tractor”, “turning a butterfly into a caterpillar and then trying to turn it
into a butterfly again” and “resolving an equation with all unknowns” (see Witt 2013a,
164, 173). The practice was also compared to alchemy and sorcery, and even to taking
a death mask from a corpse (the interlinear being a corpse).
The frustration experienced by Russian translators who depended on interlinears
reached a peak following the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states in 1940. This geopoli-
tical expansion implied an inclusion of new source literatures into the Soviet canon and
created a demand for translations from Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. While the
culture of these countries was well known and familiar to most Russians, their languages
were as unintelligible and alien to them as any of the Turkic nationalities’ languages, which
prompted a new need for interlinear translations to be used as intermediates. As evidenced
in the archival documentation from the Nationalities Commission of the Union of Soviet
Writers in 1943, this situation exposed problems inherent in the practice which had not
previously been perceived as such. As argued by one Lithuanian author, exiled to
Moscow after the German invasion of 1941, the method had proven unsuitable in relation
to Lithuanian poetry which traditionally built not on spectacular metaphors and similes
but was instead distinguished by a subtle folkish language: “what sometimes may be
glimpsed between the lines, what is written in the simplest words of the people, become
banalities in the interlinear and such interlinears do not inspire translators; these
poems get lost”.17 The epistemological dead end confronting the final translator was com-
pared by a Russian member of the Baltic Commission to “playing a blind man’s buff”.
Working in the field himself, he complained, referring to Nikolai Gogol’s famous short
story “The Nose”: “It is difficult to translate from a bad interlinear. You take the interlinear
and there everything comes out in a flat [trivial] way, like major Kovalev touching his nose
and finding a completely flat spot.”18 As stated by Petr Skosyrev, secretary of the Board of
the Nationalities Commission, in the case of “Oriental” translation (that is, from the
languages of Central Asia and the Caucasus) the “unusual images and metaphors”
provided sufficient material for the poet-translators, while in the case of the Baltic
languages (“Western languages with foreign roots”), which lacked such conspicuous
features, indirect translation was no longer acceptable.19
The official requirements articulated in 1943 to the effect that Russian translators
orienting themselves toward the Baltic literatures were to have at least “an average
command of the language”20 seem to have had limited impact, as interlinear intermediates
continued to play a significant role in this context as well. When, in 1965, there was a com-
petition for the best translation of a poem by Lithuanian poet Salomea Neris, the source
text presented to the 75 participants was not the original, but a Russian podstrochnik
(Gasparov 2001).

Agency and regulation

The issue of translational agency – “the capacity to carry out actions” or “the willingness
and ability to act” (see discussion of the term in Pym 2011) – becomes significantly more
174 S. WITT

complicated in cases such as the ones described above than in cases of direct translation,
for obvious reasons. As agents multiply, so do the various kinds of agency made possible at
the different stages of the translation process. The Soviet archival material gives ample
evidence both of initiatives taken by various agents (including authors) and of the admin-
istrative steps taken by the literary apparatus to manage the results of such activities and
regulate the space open for agency. It also shows that institutional aspects of the apparatus
itself could prompt certain types of initiatives.
One such aspect was the system of renumeration. The producer of the interlinear
intermediate was paid only one-tenth to one-sixth of the (final) translator’s fee, which,
in turn, was about the same as the original author’s. Thus there were strong incentives
to increase the number of lines, which was the basis for calculation. As noticed by one
Russian translator, such additive translation on part of the podstrochnikist led to a “loss
of the literary style of the work”21 and subsequently constituted another source of epis-
temological uncertainty inherent in the practice. The same economic interest could, of
course, affect the work of the final (intralingual) translator as well. The cited translator,
for example, was himself accused of having added an extra 900 lines to a Kazakh folk
epic, an operation which would have generated a significant sum (Witt 2013a, 166).
Such actions were made possible by another factor adding to the accumulated uncertainty
of the method, namely the lack of corresponding linguistic competence on part of the
editors. Work at this stage of the publishing process was almost exclusively monolingual,
as a translator of Georgian origin (an example of a bilingual in this context) complained:
“We don’t have editors who know nationalities languages. The function of the editor is
reduced to smoothing out the translation, Russifying it, thinking that he is a master
who knows what the Russian should be like.”22 The idea of introducing the function of
a “controller” (svershchik) responsible for comparing the translations with the original
texts either before or after editing was endorsed by many translators, but its implemen-
tation has not been possible to assess in the material.
Economic incentives prompted the emergence of intermediate texts with quite varied
status. Original authors writing in nationalities languages were strongly motivated to
have their works translated into Russian, as they would then enter Soviet literature at
the all-union level, with corresponding print runs (the first print often amounting to at
least 10,000 copies, to be followed by possible reprints). The initiative was often taken
by authors themselves by approaching individual translators or representatives of the lit-
erary apparatus in order to promote the translation of their own work into Russian, a prac-
tice which generated extensive review on the part of the Writers’ Union with regard to
the expertise of its nationalities cadres. Indicative of such initiatives – as well as of the pro-
cedures generally involved in the production of the bard literature – is a review produced
by the Kazakh writer and literary official Abil’da Tazhibaev, dated 25 July 1940:
At your request I have read some poems by the Kazakh bard [akyn] Dzhangabylev and the
Dagestani bard [ashug] Murta-Zaliev. Dzhangabylev’s poems written about Lenin, Stalin, the
Kazakh folk hero Amangeldy and other poems on defense topics are not significant in any
way. It is clear that the akyn did not work independently but under the influence of
another person, who roughly told him – in a newspaper jargon – about the international situ-
ation and about the achievements of our country. Otherwise the akyn would not have been
able to produce such a thing, as his typical traits are his imagery and the expressiveness of
poetical language. In a bleak and tedious way every poem tells the “history” of Soviet
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 175

power, victories on all fronts and ends with the cliché, “We are heading towards commun-
ism.” From the same “success” suffers the Dagestani ashug Murta-Zaliev, who has written a
poem on the Red Army and Comr. Voroshilov.23

Agency in cases like these could perhaps be best described as fluid, involving more than
one agent (cf. the constellational production referred to above). At times authors would
offer their own interlinear intermediates in Russian without presenting the originals.
Traces of such activities are, for instance, numerous archival units containing only inter-
mediate interlinears and “literary translations” of particular works. In such cases the inter-
mediate could technically be an original in the sense of an ultimate source text. This may
be the case in the following account, given by the head of the Kazakh Commission:
This summer [1938], I was approached by a man who said that he had a stock of Kazakh
fairytales and that he could give me interlinear translations of them. I asked him to give
me the originals, but he couldn’t find them. I didn’t accept his proposal and I was probably
right in doing so, because in such cases you can always get into trouble.24

Massive evidence of the problems caused by the lack of originals is found in the documen-
tation from the Nationalities Commission of the Writers’ Union pertaining to the years
1939–40 (for a detailed account, see Witt 2013a). At this time the problem of originals
was actualized, in particular, by the need for authoritative source-language editions of
the output of the bards which had previously appeared almost exclusively in translation
and mainly in newspapers. The death of Stal’skii (whose 70th anniversary in 1939 was
a main reason for publication) and the advanced age of Dzhambul (born in 1846) contrib-
uted to a sense of urgency in this task, and field expeditions had been sent out to Dagestan
and Kazakhstan to clarify the state of their literary legacy. In both cases alarming textolo-
gical situations were reported. In Dagestan, “at the Writers’ Union were discovered large
amounts of absolutely illiterate podstrochniki, cohering neither with the original nor with
common sense”.25 Over 30 works by Stal’skii published in Russian translation were found
to lack any originals whatsoever, a fact presenting significant obstacles to the production of
a planned volume in the original Lezgian langugage. As evidenced by the reporter, some
poems could be included in this book only in the form of back translations from Russian.
As the Russian source texts themselves had a complex genealogy, sometimes involving an
Azerbaijani intermediate (Witt 2013a, 170), the ontological status of the new Lezgian – in
fact, secondary – originals was utterly unclear. In the absence of ultimate source texts –
which, in the case of these bards, would be transcriptions of oral performances – inter-
mediate interlinears acquired documentary value and their treatment became a central
issue in the attempts on the part of the literary apparatus to regulate the practice.26
Against the background of the chaotic situation which had thus been revealed, and fol-
lowing intense discussions at the Nationalities Commission, a resolution was passed in
January 1940 which was entitled “On the Regulation of Literary Translations from the
Languges of the Peoples of the USSR”.27 Here it was declared that “since the fundamental
task of any translation is the re-creation, by the means of one language, of a work written
in another language, it is necessary for the translator to know the language of the work he
is translating”, and that all organizations conducting “educational and cultural work” with
writers were obliged to assist them in learning the languages of the “brotherly republics”
(56). However, as such a task was time-consuming, and the “needs of the Soviet reader for
literary translations from the nationalities languages have to be satisfied immediately”, it
176 S. WITT

was stated that “the practice of literary translation by way of organizing a preliminary
interlinear translation of the original” could be allowed for as a temporary solution (57).
It was pointed out that the translator, in familiarizing himself with this interlinear, was
“sort of” (kak by) familiarizing himself with the original. Recognizing the high demands
thereby put on the intermediate, the resolution presented a list of requirements obviously
designed to enhance the value of the podstrochnik as an epistemological tool.
First, it had to
transfer absolutely exactly the general content of the work as well as its whole system of
images, and the characteristic traits of its lexicon, while at the same time preserving the syn-
tactical and intonational structures of the poetic language of the original author. (57)

In view of the significant differences which existed between the individual languages of the
USSR, and the corresponding difficulties in translating “certain words, images and entire
syntactical groups of the original”, it was declared compulsory to provide the interlinear
in two versions: one version (a word-for-word one) was to give a translation of each
word in the original, retaining the word order characteristic of the original; the other (an
“intelligible one”) had to “open up for the translator the meaning of each phrase of the orig-
inal, revealing (deciphering) each verbal complex and image which is not always clear from a
literal translation” (58). In addition, the interlinear should be complemented by “a descrip-
tion (a scheme) of the rhythmical structure of the original with an obligatory description of
the stanzaic structure, the order of caesuras, the alternation of rhymes and their character-
ization” (58). Furthermore, with the interlinear “the original work in Russian transcription”
or a transcription into the translating language (if other than Russian) should be enclosed. It
was emphasized that “without such an original the podstrochnik could not be accepted as the
basis for a literary [khudozhestvennyi] translation” (58). Also to be attached was a commen-
tary, including some “information on the author of the original work as well as on the work
itself (the affiliation of the author to a literary school, the dates of composition of the works,
etc.)” (58). In addition, the podstrochnik was to be richly commented upon from the point of
view of “images, phrases and individual words which risked being misinterpreted or not
understood” (58). Reaching back to Toury’s distinction we may say that these requirements
were oriented towards enhancing the possibilities for “translation of literary texts”, as
opposed to “literary translation” (1995, 168).
A further point in the resolution addressed a problem that had been widely discussed
within the organization in terms of the “responsibility” of the translator. It was stated that
the interlinear “could not and should not be anonymous”: “The existence of the signature
of the author (or the authors) of the interlinear translation is a condition without which
this interlinear translation could not be used for work” (58–59). The make-up of this
specific group of agents was declared an issue of particular importance, subject to admin-
istrative efforts on the part of the apparatus:
Since the making of intermediate interlinears is serious and responsible work, requiring
from the author good knowledge of languages as well as literary taste and a considerable
amount of culture, the Board of every writers’ organization in the republics and regions is
obliged to carry out registration of these cadres and draw them into the daily creative
work of the writers’ collective. It is inadmissible to entrust the making of intermediate inter-
linears to random people who are not able to bear responsibility for the work they have been
assigned. (59)
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 177

Bearing in mind the enormous quantities of text that had to be processed according to the
rules proposed in the resolution, it is possible to perceive the truly utopian dimension of
this document, which was in a sense typical of Soviet projects in general. A point in the
practical part of the resolution contributed significantly to its utopian character,
suggesting that the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow (an institution
within the structure of the Soviet Academy of Sciences) set up an “all-Union scholarly
archive” comprising “all materials relating to the literary translation from the languages
of the peoples of the USSR” (60). The archive was to receive “copies of all intermediate
interlinears produced locally as well as in Moscow”. In this way, it was declared, the
new archive would constitute “not only the main depository for all material concerning
translations but also a kind of central control instance for issues relating to translation
from the literatures of the peoples of the USSR” (60–61). Although the impact of the res-
olution is difficult to assess (no traces of such an archive have been localized at the insti-
tution mentioned here), the utopian ambition continued to be reflected in the
documentation of the Nationalities Commission. For example, a working plan for the
year 1944 included the following far-reaching item, indicating the importance of inter-
mediates in the administration of Soviet literature as a multinational product: “Reprinting
(in collotype press) of intermediate interlinears of all famous literary works of the peoples
of the USSR for distribution to all national republics of the USSR.”28
A specific function accorded the intermediate interlinears had a bearing on issues of
censorship. While translation itself on a general level could be viewed as a complex set
of censorial practices – from the choice of works to be translated to the methods
applied (cf. Sherry 2015) – prose interlinears played a specific role in the editorial proces-
sing of the enormous amounts of text involved. Apart from giving a hint about the quality
of a particular work, they offered the editor an opportunity to reject politically unaccep-
table texts at an early stage, before wasting money on the final translation. As one editor
commented:
From the podstrochnik I can see if it is necessary to translate a piece or not. There was an
incident with Comr. Minikh. He brought a poem from the Tatar republic. It was a good
lyrical poem, but it had a flaw: the author juxtaposed the individual and the societal. If I
had had a podstrochnik I could have said immediately that it was not to be translated. His
hero finds himself in the army and writes a letter to his girl … . Further on he makes a pol-
itical mistake. He writes to her that he is at the front, very far away, and that letters do not
reach them there. That is slander. When the events at the lake Khazan happened the com-
manders and the commissars wrote to the families of the soldiers and told them of their
heroic deeds. That’s how you should work with podstrochniki.29

Despite the theoretical and organizational efforts thus put into the Soviet system of indir-
ect translation, it seems largely to have resisted improvements.30 Contrary to all declara-
tions of its temporary character, it continued to prosper. In his seminal work Foundations
for a General Theory of Translation, Andrei Fedorov comments on the practice as “an
essential defect” which had been affecting nationalities translation and which “had not
yet been overcome”:
The podstrochnik is an eccentric, often monstrous phenomenon, in which it is necessary to
combine both a striving toward literalism (since the translating person has to know all the
elements of the text) and toward meaning; oftentimes this is not achieved, because the one
excludes the other. (1968, 125)
178 S. WITT

In 1972, a reviewer of a new edition of a Kazakh poet made from intermediate interlinears
criticized a range of shortcomings, including the anonymity of the compilers. He con-
cluded: “The Selected Works of Sultanmakhmut Toraigyrov is a most vivid example of
HOW NOT to issue the poems by a canonical writer who is the pride of his national
culture” (Zhovtis 1972, 118). As for the means of regulation, it was not until 1987 that
a rule was imposed that prohibited the publication of translations of work which had
not been published in their original langugage (Goble 1990, 138), presumably putting
an end to the problem of the podstrochnik as an “original genre”, lacking an identifiable
source text.

Conclusion
The overview of issues relating to Soviet practices of indirect translation provided in this
article gives strong support to the claim that “[t]he study of a translation without infor-
mation about the ways in which it has come into being – directly or with the help of
an intermediate interlinear – is either impossible or idle” (Vanechkova 1978, 12). It is
clear that research on translation in the USSR has to confront a complex reality which
is seldom reflected in reference works or bibliographies. This is a fact that complicates
large-scale projects aiming to study, for example, translation flows within the Union
and centre–periphery relations.
The final outcome of the massive use of intermediate texts for translation in Soviet
culture was multifaceted and paradoxical. It installed a specific epistemological uncer-
tainty into large parts of the literary system, while simultaneously calling attention to
the mediated nature of all text production in Soviet culture, involving editors, correctors,
censors, etc. It relativized the very concept of translation, and, perhaps even more impor-
tantly, of the translator, continuously informing discourses of professionalization and
status. It produced new types of translational agency and new types of texts with
varying ontological status.
The persistence of the practice, despite educational efforts on the part of all the agents
of translation – authors, podstrochnikisty, final translators and editors – suggests that it
was in fact a vital constituent of the mode of functioning of the multinational but Russo-
centric Soviet literature. The Soviet efforts to perfect the method of podstrochnik trans-
lation, preferring it to relay translation, at least in theory, may recall the utopianist
mode of Walter Benjamin’s rejection of “translations made from translations” in favour
of “the interlinear version of the Scriptures” as “the prototype or ideal of all translation”
(Benjamin 2004, 83).

Notes
1. Russian State Archive for Literature and Art [RGALI], f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 294, l. 13. All
translations in this article are mine (S.W.) if not otherwise indicated.
2. The extent to which intermediate interlinears were used in translation of non-literary texts
still remains to be explored; such translation is, as a rule, not reflected in the archival docu-
mentation pertaining to the Soviet Writers’ Union.
3. The Nationalities Commission was a body assigned the task of “mutual and broad familiar-
ization with the literatures of the brotherly republics”, at the heart of which was translation.
(RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 295, l. 1). In particular, its work was to further the publication
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 179

of nationalities literature in Russian, thereby giving it access to the “arena of world literature”
(RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 295, l. 2). Within its structure were subdivisions such as the
Kazakh Commission, the Dagestani Commission, etc.
4. The boom was of course also a result of state and party initiatives, such as the 1935 “Resol-
ution of the Presidium of the Nationalities Council of the Central Executive Committee of the
USSR on the Development of Artistic Creation on Part of the Peoples of the USSR” (RGALI,
f. 613, op. 1, ed. khr. 4719).
5. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 425. A certain fatigue among the officials may be glimpsed
through the archival material: “The procession of jubilees which has been set in motion all
over the Soviet land is an indicator of the genuine growth of the cultures of the Soviet
people. … However, if people try to invent causes for a jubilee in an artificial way, this is
already a dangerous thing” (Skosyrev, RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 295, l. 30).
6. Pseudotranslation as defined by Toury himself is “texts which have been presented as trans-
lations with no corresponding source texts in other languages ever having existed – hence no
factual ‘transfer operations’ and translation relationships” (1995, 40).
7. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 230.
8. Although a possible case, the podstrochnik was very seldom “a textually-dominated trans-
lation”, yielding “products which are well-formed in terms of general conventions of text for-
mation pertinent to the target culture, even if they do not conform to any recognized literary
model within it” (Toury 1995, 171). In many cases, the qualifier “well-formed” did not apply
even at the linguistic level.
9. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 1, l. 24. Detailing the existing professional qualifications among
Soviet translators in the early 1930s, the report provides a virtual snapshot of the whole situ-
ation in the field of literary translation at the time.
10. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 1, ll. 11–12.
11. The career of Ezra Levontin (1891–1968) is quite representative of the category of poet-trans-
lator (poet-perevodchik) in the Soviet literary system: having authored several collections of
original poetry (far from a proletarian kind) prior to 1928, he could publish mainly as a trans-
lator from nationalities langugages (Kazakh, Chechen and Mari, a Finno-Ugric language
spoken in parts of Eastern Russia); occasionally he published translations of Western
authors such as Guy de Maupassant (see e.g. http://www.vekperevoda.com/1887/levont.
htm) and some translation criticism.
12. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 7, l. 4; here, the applicant is called a “translator” in quotation
marks.
13. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 22, l. 8.
14. Initiatives taken by the Translators’ Section to further direct translation include the following
activities reported in 1936: “The Section has organized two-year seminars at the Literary Uni-
versity [at the Writers’ Union] in the art of translation from English, German and French.
They are now running successfully in their second year. Currently they are being comple-
mented by seminars on translation from Ukrainian, Georgian, and Turkic langugages,
which occupies a prominent place within the literature of the peoples of the USSR while
at the same time experiencing a lack of translators (into Russian) (RGALI, f. 631, op. 21,
ed. khr. 12, l. 26).
15. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 5, l. 21 (Rozaliia Shor).
16. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 5, l. 76. The case of Osip Kolychev (1904–73) differs from that
of Levontin: translation was not a substitute but a complement to his career as an original,
well-published Stalinist poet. Examples of this category were quite numerous as well.
17. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 657, l. 69 (Kostas Korsakas; see Witt 2013a for the context of this
discussion).
18. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 659, l. 32 (Mikhail Zenkevich).
19. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 657, l. 86.
20. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 657, l. 86.
21. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 1, l. 33 (Lev Pen’kovskii, 1934).
22. RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 23, l. 21 (Elena Gogoberidze, 1938).
180 S. WITT

23. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 512, l. 14. It is a fact that many of the works of “nationalities
authors” that were actually published could be described in a similar way. Tazhibaev was
himself one of the poets engaged in the project of transcribing the oral works of Dzhambul
and providing intermediate interlinears, as described above.
24. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 295, l. 6 (Leonid Sobolev, 1939).
25. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 294, l. 2 (Evgenii Korabel’nikov, 1939).
26. The problem had been officially recognized already at the First All-Union Conference of
Translators in 1936, the resolution of which stated, with reference to the intermediate inter-
linears, “[n]oting the extremely low quality of podstrochniki and the howling examples of dis-
tortions and ad-libbing [otsebiatina] in translation from the nationalities languages into
Russian, it should be suggested to publishing houses that they raise their demands in
terms of the quality of their podstrochniki and, with the aim of attracting highly qualified
cadres, at the same time increase the payment offered to podstrochniki as much as possible”
(RGALI, f. 631, op. 21, ed. khr. 9, ll. 1–2; see also Witt 2013b). The impact of this suggestion
had apparently been insignificant.
27. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 475, ll. 56–61 (original text published in Witt 2013a). In the
following, in-text references will be given to sheets (listy) in this document.
28. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 696, l. 2. The points of the 1940 resolution were elaborated
further in the article “Literary Translation and Its Portfolio”, written at the request of the
Nationalities Commission by the poet-translator Mark Tarlovskii (1940) and published in
the periodical anthology Druzhba narodov (Peoples’ friendship), which had been founded
in 1939 with a view to providing an “organizational basis for finally settling the problem
of translations” (RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 308, l. 7). For more on Tarlovskii’s article,
see Witt 2011, 161–162.
29. RGALI, f. 631, op. 6, ed. khr. 308, l. 33 (Deev 1939).
30. It should be pointed out, however, that the quality of the intermediate texts could differ sig-
nificantly: “There are podstrochniki from which the [final] translator picks not only images
and individual words but which often provide entire groups of words or even lines. And then
there are such podstrochniki with which the [final] translator has to struggle, seeking out
other expressions than the ones used in them” (Khachatriants 1939, 4). For a case of pod-
strochnik translation involving both an original text, an annotated interlinear and some con-
textual information, recalling the requirements as described above, see Witt 2015.

Note on contributor
Susanna Witt is senior lecturer in Russian literature at the Department of Slavic and Baltic
Languages, Finnish, Dutch and German at Stockholm University and affiliated researcher at
Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. A specialist in Boris Paster-
nak’s poetry and prose, she has also published widely on topics related to Russian translation
history of the Soviet period. Her recent publications include “Byron’s Don Juan in Russian and
the ‘Soviet School of Translation’ ”, Translation and Interpreting Studies 11:1 (2016); “Translation
and Intertextuality in the Soviet-Russian Context: The Case of Georgy Shengeli’s Don Juan”, Slavic
and East European Journal 60:1 (2016); “Pasternak, Łysohorsky and the Significance of “Unheroic’
Translation”, Russian Literature 78 (2015).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet: [Grant Number 2014-1187].
 TRANSLATION STUDIES 181

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