OLD RUSSIAN CULTURE AND TRANSLATION

Translation in Russia is traced back to the period of adoption of Christianity in Kievan Rus (988 A.D.), known as the period of the early written documents. Of course, translation was known much earlier: the Greek and the Slavs had to trade and could not do so without interpreting.

Cyril and Methodius, the outstanding scholars, theologians and linguists who were called “the apostles of the Slavs” for their cultural and religious development of the Slavic people, translated the Holy Scriptures into the language later known as Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian) and invented a Slavic alphabet based on Greek characters. Early Christian translations were philosophical and ethical doctrines of the new religion. These included Lives of Saints, Homilies, Chronicles and the like.

What was typical of Old Russian translations? These were translations, mostly from Greek, according to meaning, which avoided word for word precision. As a matter of fact, they were adapted borrowed works with no name of the translator mentioned. Secular literature was translated rather freely: translators could change a source text to their liking, or simulate someone else’s stories by taking either a plot, an idea, or some poetic image from them to create their own works. As previously discussed, the same trend was characteristic of secular translations in Medieval Western Europe.

The late 13^th and early 14^th centuries - the Tatar period - was far from being favorable to Kievan culture, and to translation in particular. Despite the Mongol invasion and the Tatar yoke, there was no major influence on Russian culture. There is also no evidence that any single Turkic or Islamic text of religious, philosophical, literary or scholarly content was translated directly into Slavonic or any East Slavic vernacular during this period.88 Greek translations were not in circulation in Rus (Old Russia) in that time.

The second half of the 14^th and the beginning of the 15^th centuries is characterized as the Second South Slavic Influence on Moscow Rus culture89 (the first southern Slavic wave is related to Cyril and Methodius). A great number of new translations into Old Church Slavonic, carried out in Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek, and Jerusalem monasteries, were brought to Rus. The new Southern Slavic influence on culture resulted in the literal translation of clerical literature. The requirement to translate word for word gained force until the 17^th century.90

Translations were no longer anonymous. One of the most eminent figures of the 16^th century was Maxim the Greek who came from Greece to Russia to edit clerical books. (Since Maxim the Greek could not write Old Church Slavonic, the written form of the Russian language of the time, he translated from Greek into Latin and his assistants translated the Latin text into Old Slavonic.) Maxim the Greek is believed to have established “the grammar school of translation”91 in Russia, since he paid particular attention to translating grammar structures.

The second half of the 15^th century saw a marked turn toward translated secular literature, especially tales of chivalry. These translations grew extensively, especially in the 17^th century, as a result of increased cultural contacts with Europe. Works were translated not from Greek only, but also from Latin (as a scientific international language), Polish, and German. The interpreters who served for the Posolsky prikaz (foreign office) were called tolmach. Most of them were half-educated; some of them did not even know literary Russian (Old Church Slavonic), there being a wide gulf between oral and literary Russian. Some of them could hardly speak “living” Russian. Thus their interpretation was of such poor quality that since then the term ‘tolmach’ has carried a strong negative connotation.

Clerics, on the other hand, were much better qualified as translators. Beside translating theological literature, they were ordered to translate various educational and encyclopedic literature.

The 17^th century is considered the period of “the synthetic theory of translation”. Translation concepts of the time seemed to synthesize extreme principles: translation by meaning and word-for-word, free and literal translation, a preponderance of grammar and aesthetic aspects.92