BASEES Talk: From Translation to Textual Criticism & Back Again: Volodymyr Vynnychenko Oeuvre and Its English Representations
In Autumn/Winter 2023/24 BASEES will organise a series of Talks spotlighting the research of the recipients of Non-Residentials Fellows from Ukraine. Dr Stasiuk opens the cycle with his presentation on Vynnychenko
Abstract
In 2022, the whole heritage of an outstanding Ukrainian writer, dramatist, political and cultural figure Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880–1951) which was published during his lifetime has unconditionally entered the public domain. Nowadays, Vynnychenko editors, translators and scholars can enjoy more freedom with his texts. However, more creative freedom means a bigger responsibility for preserving authentic Vynnychenko, his style and cultural attitudes, both in original and translations. A show case of the recent Yuri Tkacz’s English version of Black Panther and Polar Bear, Vynnychenko’s renowned Modernist play, highlighted some expected and yet glaring issues with the quality of the source text, its typographical errors and “dark places” promulgated by numerous editions, including academic ones, as well as cultural background which has become murky both for a nowadays reader, literature scholar and translator.
Diligent textual processing and commenting of the numerous versions Vynnychenko’s texts have is a sine-qua-non prerequisite for their proper rendition both in the Ukrainian language originals as well as other language translations. Their corpora are to constitute a novelty digital platform preliminary called ВИNNИЧЕNКО 2.0 for texts online publication, study, annotation and discussion which would utilise the whole potential of the current-day Ukrainian digital humanities and their resources.
Bio
Dr Bohdan Stasiuk works at the Department of Translation, Applied and General Linguistics of the V. Vynnychenko Central Ukrainian State University in Kropyvnytskyi. In 2011, he defended his PhD thesis on Ukrainian translation studies at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and since then has been researching the history of Ukrainian translation as well as microhistories of regional and local translators of the heartland of Ukraine. Also, he has been practising literary translation himself since 2005 and was twice nominated as the best science fiction translator from Ukraine by the European Science Fiction Society.
As of now, Bohdan Stasiuk’s current research brought him to the oeuvre of Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a prolific Ukrainian writer, dramatist, and publicist, an outstanding public and political figure of the early 20th century as well as his compatriot. Though popular and demanded even now, most of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s novels, plays and stories have never seen proper academic publication with profound textual history, criticism and annotations. This fact hugely encumbers Vynnychenko translators’ activity and promotes their mistakes even in modern English versions of Vynnychenko texts. Bohdan Stasiuk’s research has been supported by the British Association for Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES).