Truth, Doubt and Hearsay in 17^th-Century Russian News Translations

ABSTRACT

On the basis of material consisting of Russian news translations from 1669 and 1670 (the so-called Vesti-Kuranty), along with the German and Dutch news reports from which the translations were made, this paper examines expressions for the reliability of the reported information. This includes formulaic expressions of truth and doubt, as well as syntactic means of marking hearsay. The study shows that in most cases, the translators took care to understand the reliability judgments expressed in the source texts and render them adequately in Russian, although some exceptions can be seen, especially in expressions of doubt. The existence of formulaic expressions that were not literal translations of the expressions found in the source texts shows that Russian news texts were developing their own genre characteristics.

KEYWORDS:

• Early modern newspapers
• translation
• historical pragmatics
• formulaic expressions
• hearsay

1. Introduction

The first printed newspapers in Western Europe appeared in the early 17^th century, although they were preceded on the one hand by handwritten newsletters and on the other hand by printed non-periodical pamphlets¹. Just as modern newspapers do, the early modern newsprints commented on the reliability of what they reported. Publishers of occasional prints wanted to attract potential customers and emphasized the veracity of the contents; many English pamphlets, for instance, bore titles containing the words true relation (cf. Brownlees 2014, 5). The publishers and editors of periodical papers, who wished to build trust on the part of their readers so that they would keep subscribing, used other strategies, avoided exaggeration and often marked information as hearsay, so if the news turned out not to be true they would not lose their reputation as reliable news providers (Gieseler 1996, 269).

Russia did not have any printed newspapers at this time, nor any widely distributed handwritten newsletters. However, selections of news items from imported, mainly German and Dutch, newspapers and pamphlets were translated for the benefit of the tsar and the noblemen. These news digests, known as Vesti-Kuranty, were made at the Diplomatic Chancery in Moscow, beginning in the 1620s, and kept only in manuscript form (cf. for instance Šamin 2011; Maier and Shamin 2014).

In the case of the Russian news translations, there was no need for advertising single copies or appearing trustworthy to subscribers, since there were no competitors on the market, and the tsar and the noblemen were the sole customers. The translators selected which items to translate, but such decisions seem to have been based entirely on subject matter (cf. Maier 2008, 89–108), not on the degree of reliability of the reports. Nevertheless, we can assume that the recipients of the texts were interested in the truthfulness of the information, and that the translators attempted to convey the expressions of reliability judgment they found in the texts in some way. In this paper, I will examine some of the strategies they used to translate expressions of truth, doubt and hearsay in order to determine if the translators took the self-proclaimed reliability of the source texts into consideration when translating, what patterns emerge in their ways of expressing these functions in Russian, and how these patterns may be explained.

2. The structure of news reporting and formulaic expressions

The linguistic features studied here do not in themselves carry any news content, but belong to the structure of news reporting. Thomas Gloning, who has studied the lexicon of German 17^th-century newspapers, speaks of the functional vocabulary (funktionaler Wortschatz, cf. Gloning 1996, 142). Ulrike Haß-Zumkehr, in her study of formulaic expressions in German newspapers from the 17^th to the 20^th centuries, distinguishes between the main predications of the news reports, containing the actual news content, and the secondary predications, that pertain to the structure of the news items (Neben-/Zusatzprädikationen, cf. Haß-Zumkehr 1998, 18 et passim).

Studies on the language of early modern English and German newspapers have shown that recurring, formulaic expressions were common within the functional vocabulary. They can frequently be found in text types where certain topics are often repeated and where individuality is not a high priority. Text production under time pressure also makes authors resort to fixed formulas, since this is often easier than using a more varied language. Recurring topics and time pressure can easily be said to characterize the production of news texts (Haß-Zumkehr 1998, 15–16). The translations into Russian were usually made on the very day when the foreign newspapers reached Moscow (Šamin 2011, 103–104), i.e. under time pressure, which means that the prerequisites for formulaic expressions were present in the translation situation as well.

It has been noted that other early Russian genres also had a tendency to use fixed formulas. The peculiarities of the written language in Russia during that period can provide an explanation. Bookish features, associated with Church Slavonic, were frequent in the written language but largely absent from the spoken language. Because scribes could not entirely use their spoken language as a basis for written text production, they relied heavily on earlier written texts of a similar kind as models for the texts they were constructing, which led to the emergence of genre-specific formulas (Živov 1996, 23–25). This makes it all the more probable that the Russian news translations should contain recurring expressions, and that at the time studied here, when texts of this kind had already been produced for half a century, there should be expressions typical of this particular genre.

3. Previous research

The genre characteristics of early modern newspaper language have mainly been studied on the basis of English and German material. The abovementioned article by Thomas Gloning (1996) is part of a volume of articles, which was the result of a research project on the language in 17^th-century German newspapers. In this project, the entire print runs of two newspapers from 1609 and three from 1667 were studied from different points of view. Besides Gloning’s article about the lexicon, where he examines, among other things, expressions for the source of the news (Gloning 1996, 148–50), the articles by Gieseler and Schröder (1996), Demske-Neumann (1996) and Gieseler (1996) are particularly relevant to this study. Jens Gieseler and Thomas Schröder study the structure of the news reports and the selection of information. Of particular importance for this article is the section on the means of reporting speech and referring to sources (Gieseler & Schröder 1996, 56–63). Ulrike Demske-Neumann approaches the question of genrespecific features from a syntactic point of view, touching upon some elements that relate to sources and reliability (Demske-Neumann 1996, 77–78, 94–101), such as the use of the passive voice in expressions such as aus [ … ] wird geschrieben ‘it is written from [ … ]’ to avoid specifying the source of the news. Jens Gieseler (1996), in his single-authored article, writes about the discussions in the 17^th century about the reliability of newspapers, a topic that ties into the pragmatic background of this study.

As already mentioned, Ulrike Haß-Zumkehr (1998) has studied formulaic expressions in German newspapers from the 17^th to the 20^th centuries. The parts of her corpus that are most relevant to this study are newspapers from the early 17^th century (1609) and newspapers from the early 18^th century. She states that the range of what she terms secondary predications is limited in form and content; more specifically, she identifies four main functions (Haß-Zumkehr 1998, 18–23). Two of these functions are of primary importance for this article, namely on the one hand helping to identify the textual structure of the news genre, and on the other hand reflecting on the trustworthiness and topicality of the news. According to Haß-Zumkehr, reflections on the trustworthiness of the news were not as formulaically expressed as certain other functions, although she gives examples of recurring expressions for corrections of information that had proven to be false, such as continuieret nicht ‘is not confirmed [literally: does not continue, is not repeated]’ (cf. example 11 below). For each investigated time period (1609, 1700–1770, 1770–1850 and 1850–1914/19), she gives examples of different types of secondary predications that can be associated with these main functions.

Nicholas Brownlees, who has studied the language of early English news, devotes one chapter of his monograph (Brownlees 2014, 71–85) to the authentication strategies in English news writing during the years 1625–1631. In England, as in Germany, there were frequent accusations about news being inaccurate. News writers challenged these accusations for example by providing names, dates, numbers and other details that suggested that the accounts were based on eyewitness reports.

Ingrid Maier’s monograph (Maier 2008), which contains the edited source texts for the Russian translations from the years 1656, 1660–1662 and 1664–1670, together with information on the spread of foreign news in Russia and on the translation technique, also comments on some expressions that relate to this field. Among other things, Maier (2008, 154–155) notes that certain expressions that indicated doubt in the reliability of the news or the existence of conflicting versions were left out in the translations.

Early Russian texts have not to any great extent been the subject of historical-pragmatic studies, but Daniel E. Collins’ monograph (Collins 2001) is a notable exception, which deals with reported speech in 15^th- and early 16^th-century trial transcripts. Collins discusses the use of different reporting strategies such as direct versus indirect speech or the presence or absence of verba dicendi. Although reported speech is also one of the features studied in this article, the text types differ too much to allow much comparison. The purpose of the trial records was to document what had been said, and the scribes avoided evaluating the truthfulness of the statements, leaving that task to the judges (Collins 2001, 290–91), so judgments of truth and doubt can be found only occasionally.

4. Material

The material for this study is divided into two parts. One part, which I call the “large corpus,” consists of all preserved Russian news translations from 1669 and 1670, amounting to approximately 57,500 words. The Russian translations are cited according to the 2009 edition (Vesti-Kuranty 2009). Texts from this particular volume of the Vesti-Kuranty series were chosen because of the accompanying publication of source texts.

Not all translations have been matched to their source texts, but I will also use a “small corpus” consisting of those Russian texts for which German and Dutch originals have been identified (approximately 19,000 words, i.e. one third of the large corpus), along with the originals in question, cited according to the edition from 2008 (Maier 2008).

The material has been prepared for the corpus in the following way. All editorial comments have been removed. Cyrillic numerals have been replaced with Arabic numerals. Letters and letter variants that are no longer in use in Russian have been replaced by the modern letters that, already in the 17^th century, represented the same sounds, such as <ї> by <и> and <ѳ> by <ф>. The only exception to this is the letter <ѣ>, which at this time probably already represented the same sound as the letter <e>, but the use of which was more consistent than that of other letter variants, and which is therefore retained. The same simplified orthography is used in the Russian quotes in this paper.

A few words must be said about the compilation of the small corpus with regard to the structure of the German and Dutch newspapers. Each newspaper issue consisted of correspondences headed by datelines, indicating the origin (usually a city) and date of the correspondence. Each correspondence could contain several reports, since several events could have been recorded by the same correspondent. These reports were usually not introduced by separate headings or even by the start of a new paragraph.

The newspapers were never translated into Russian in their entirety. The selection could be made on several different levels: certain correspondences from an issue could be translated, some reports from a correspondence could be selected, parts of a report could be translated, or the correspondences or reports could be summarized, so that the translator rephrased the content rather than leaving out some sentences and translating others (cf. also Maier 2008, 153–90). In the cases when untranslated sentences can easily be identified, such sentences have not been included in the source text part of the small corpus, but in other cases, when the content was summarized and condensed, the entire source text has been included. This distinction is often difficult to make, and it is therefore not always possible to give exact numbers of occurrences in the source texts.

5. Method

As mentioned above, not all source texts have been identified. To make the most possible use of the material that has been preserved – i.e. to be able to use all the available translations from the selected years, including those for which no source text has been identified – two approaches will be combined in the study. On the one hand, quantitative tools will be applied to the large corpus in order to find frequent words and collocations relating to this semantic field. On the other hand, relevant constructions in the German and Dutch originals and the corresponding Russian expressions will be identified in the small corpus. These two approaches will complement each other, but the overarching approach will be function-to-form.

Haß-Zumkehr (1998, 9–10) argues against the use of quantitative methods when studying formulaic expressions, since the exact wording may vary and quantitative methods may fail to discover this variation. However, as we will see, the expressions used in the Russian translations are much less diverse than those used in the German and Dutch originals, which motivates using a quantitative approach in combination with qualitative analysis.

The searches in the large corpus have been made using the Wordlist and Concordance functions of WordSmith Tools, using wildcard searches to capture all spelling variants and inflectional forms of the words in question. The small corpus has been searched manually.

6. True news: expressing truth and reliability

As has already been mentioned, characterization of information as true and reliable was mainly typical of occasional prints, but it occurred in periodical newspapers as well. Haß-Zumkehr (1998, 64–66, 97–102) states that expressions of this kind were rare in German newspapers from 1609, but considerably more frequent in the newspapers from the 18^th century. Gloning (1996, 150) says that high reliability was stated explicitly “in some cases.” Brownlees (2014, 5) emphasizes the use of such formulas on the title pages of English pamphlets, and assumes that this overuse must have made the adjectives less convincing, and that other means, such as factual precision, probably played a greater role in attracting customers.

In the large corpus employed in this study, the most frequent words for ‘true’ and ‘truly’ are the adjective podlinnyj and podlinno, which can be either an adverb of manner or a predicative, functioning as a main predicate. Together these two words occur a total of 86 times. 33 of these occurrences (38.4%) are within five words of a form of the nouns věst′ or vědomost′ ‘news’. Other frequent collocations are podlinno čto ‘it is true that’ (six occurences), podlinno vědomo ‘it is truly known’ (four occurrences) and podlinno pišut ‘they write truly’ (three occurrences).

Other Russian words for ‘true’ and ‘truly’ also occur in the texts (cf. Table 1), but not as frequently, and not in combination with věst′ or vědomost′. This shows that podlinnyj and podlinno were the first-hand choice, both to convey this meaning in general and more specifically to characterize news.

Table 1. Russian words meaning ‘true’ and ‘truly’ in the news translations from 1669 and 1670.

Adjectives		Adverbs and predicatives
podlinnyj	45	podlinno	41
věrnyj	8	věrno	4
istinnyj	3	istinno, istinne	6
pravdivyj	1	vpravdu, vpravde	2

The words věst′ and vědomost′ occur a total of 263 times in their different case and number forms. The 33 occurrences of these words together with podlinnyj or podlinno amount to 12.5% of the total number of occurrences, which means that in one out of eight instances, “news” is characterized as “true.”

It is thus apparent that the translators frequently employed some form of podlinnyj or podlinno, either in combination with věst′ or vědomost′ or in some other context, to comment on the reliability of the news. However, only a study of the small corpus can reveal to what degree this reflects features found in the source texts, and to what degree the translators acted independently.

In the German originals included in the small corpus, the most common expressions for reliability are constructions with the adjective or adverb gewiß ‘certain’/‘certainly’, occurring approximately 12 times. Other constructions identified by Haß-Zumkehr (1998, 64–66, 97–102) as frequent, such as the verbs bestätigen ‘confirm’ or versichern ‘assure’, are hardly found here at all. In other words, expressions for high reliability are not very frequent in the German texts, compared to more general and less committing expressions such as “they write” or “we have news.” When the abovementioned expressions do occur in German, however, they are almost always translated into Russian. Example (1) is typical.

(1) a. Allhier ist gewisse Nachricht auß der Ukrain kommen/ daß der Doroszenko über 50000. Tartern und Kosaken so zusammen gehalten/ zwischen Korsun und Kaniewo erleget (Maier 2008, 385)²

b. Здѣсь подлинная вѣсть из Украины что Дорошенко 5000 татаръ и казаковъ которые вкупе промежъ Корсуномъ да Каневомъ стояли побилъ (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 410)

‘Here we have true/certain news from the Ukraine that Doroshenko has beaten [Ger. over] 50,000 [Ru. 5,000] Tatars and Cossacks that were united between Korsun and Kaniewo.’³

However, the translations were not always literal; rather, a limited number of formulaic expressions were used in Russian, showing that the news translations were developing a set of characteristic expressions to which the translators resorted. In example (2), the German adverb gewiß refers to the statement that the Turks are gathering troops, and no word for “news” is used. In the Russian translation, on the other hand, an introductory phrase is used, and the result is a somewhat ambiguous construction, where the adverb podlinno could be seen as referring either to the arrival of the news or to the news content itself, i.e. to the information that the Turkish Sultan is gathering troops.

(2) a. Daß die Türcken in grosser Armatur begriffen seyn/ ist gewiß, man weiss aber noch nicht/ ob es auff Maltha/ Polen/ oder Ungarn angesehen seye (Maier 2008, 430)

b. Подлинно у нас вѣсти доходят что турскои салтан болшую силу ратных людеи в сабрание имѣетъ гдѣ он поидет в Полшу, или в Венгеры или в Малтию тово не вѣдомо (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 525)

‘It is certain [Ru. Truly news is reaching us] that the Turks are [Ru. Turkish Sultan is] gathering large troops, but it is not known if they aim [Ru. he aims] for Malta, Poland or Hungary.’

There is also one case where no expression of certainty is present in the German original, but podlinnyj is used in Russian, suggesting that the Russian phrase was so formulaic that the translator used it independently of the original.

(3) a. Sonsten verlautet aus der Ukraine wiederumb/ daß Doroszenko/ Chmielniecky und Hanenko/ sich tapffer mit ihren Parteyen untereinander zauseten (Maier 2008, 406)

b. а из Украины подлинные вѣсти что Дорошенко и Хмелничонко и Ханенко межды собою болшие бои чинят (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 462)

‘And it is heard again [Ru. There is reliable news] from Ukraine that Doroshenko, Chmel′nicki and Hanenko have quarreled with each other’

The Dutch originals mainly use the adjective seecker ‘certain’ or the adverbs sekerlijk or voorseker ‘certainly’ in this function, but just as their German counterparts, they are not very frequent, occurring only a total of approximately five times. Besides an occurrence of podlinno, the Russian texts also use the word izvěstno twice to translate these expressions, such as in example (4). The remaining two occurrences of izvěstno in the large corpus are used in the modern sense, meaning ‘it is known’.

(4) a. Men hout het hier voor een seeckere saeck/ dat den Primo Visier de Vrede aen de Venetianen heeft aengeboden/ Candia en ‘t gantsche Eylandt te quiteren/ (Maier 2008, 593)

b. Пишутъ извѣстно быти что под Кандиею началнои везирь миръ виницѣяном предлагалъ на томъ что от Кандии и от всего острава отступить (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 369)

‘It is considered here to be certain that the Prime Vizier has offered the Venetians peace and offered to leave Candia and the whole island.’

Within the small corpus, the amount of text translated from Dutch is smaller than that translated from German, and if this proportion holds true for the large corpus as well, this may explain why this possible idiosyncrasy of the person(s) translating from Dutch does not leave much of a mark in the large corpus. This confirms that the combination of two approaches – quantitative searches in the large corpus and close reading of the small corpus – is needed to get the complete picture of the translators’ individual differences and the general chancery norms.

We can conclude that expressions for high reliability were not very frequent in the German and Dutch originals, which is in line with the statement that periodical papers tended to be more careful in order to keep their subscribers, in case the events turned out not to be true. However, we can also observe that when there were words and phrases expressing a high degree of reliability in the German or Dutch news reports, they were almost always rendered in the Russian translations, which lets us assume that it was important to the tsar and the other policymakers to hear whether the information they received was deemed to be true and reliable. A further conclusion is that a variety of expressions, at least in German, are rendered by fewer and more formulaic expressions in Russian. This shows that the news translations were developing a set of characteristic expressions to which the translators resorted.

7. It is not known: expressing doubt and uncertainty

We have now examined cases of explicit reference to the veracity of the news, something which was, however, not very typical of periodical news. We will now discuss a strategy with a different function: referring to something as uncertain or as hearsay.

As discussed by Gieseler (1996, 268–76), contemporaries of the early newspapers recognized the problem of reliability. One strategy the publishers employed to safeguard their own reputation was simply to indicate their sources. In my opinion, some forms of source indication could serve dual purposes: naming a source probably gave a reliable impression, but at the same time moved the responsibility for the truthfulness away from the publisher. Often, however, the source was not specified, and the publisher used expressions such as “we have heard” or “it is said”. It was also sometimes explicitly stated that the report was based on rumors.

As Maier (2008, 154–55) has observed, expressions of doubt or uncertainty were sometimes not translated into Russian. She gives examples where expressions meaning “this has not been confirmed” or “many do not believe this” have been left out in the translations. There are more examples like these in my material, but also counterexamples.

These expressions are more difficult to identify in the originals than the previously discussed expressions for high reliability. It is particularly difficult to determine if phrases such as German man saget and Dutch men spreeckt ‘they say, it is said’ should be interpreted as indications of uncertainty or as mere referrals to an unspecified news source. In most cases, I have not interpreted them as expressing uncertainty. Because of the difficulty in delineating this category, no exact numbers can be given, but even when such ambiguous cases are left out, expressions of doubt are more frequent than expressions for high reliability.

The German texts in the small corpus contain phrases such as man kann nicht wissen ‘one cannot know’, which occurs four times with small variations, or expressions with meinen/vermeinen ‘suppose, claim’ (five occurrences). The Dutch texts favor phrases such as sonder dat men weet ‘without one knowing’, which is used five times in some form.

Most of these expressions were, in fact, translated into Russian. The following example shows a rather literal translation, including the German correspondent’s doubts.

(5) a. Der Türckische Gesandte stehet noch an der Grentze/ wie in meinem vorigen gedacht/ die gemeine Rede gehet/ daß der Doroßenko dorthin zielete; Alles ist in kurtzem zu erfahren (Maier 2008, 381)

b. Турскои посолъ на рубеже стоит а какъ говорятъ, что Дорошенко туды думаетъ, в скором времени вѣдомо будетъ (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 406)

‘The Turkish envoy [Ger. still] stands at the border [Ger. as I mentioned in my last report], people say that Doroshenko means to go there; everything will soon be known’

The fact that the last phrase is translated in example (5) is rather untypical; such allusions to the development of events were usually left out. In some cases, other expressions of doubt were also left out, leaving the translation sounding much more certain than the original, such as in the following example.

(6) a. Der Käyserl. Gesandte/ sagt man/ habe höchstgemeldeter Maytt. den Todt des Königes in Spanien notificiret/ was hieran/ wird man mit der Zeit zu vernehmen haben (Maier 2008, 404)

b. Посол цесарскии его королевскому величеству потвердил о смерти короля ишпанского (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 437)

‘The Imperial envoy [Ger: they say] has reported [Ru: confirmed] the death of the Spanish king to his Royal Highness. [Ger: In time one will learn what there is to it.]’⁴

The large corpus shows that expressions of doubt are quite common in the Russian texts. A corpus search for vědomo ‘[it is] known’ yields 62 hits, 16 of which are actually negated occurrences, i.e. ne vědomo. There are 11 instances of nevědomo ‘[it is] not known’. In other words, there are 27 instances where something is characterized as “not known” against 46 instances where the word vědomo is not negated (although some of these occurrences actually contain doubt expressed in other ways, such as the phrase Господу Богу самому вѣдомо ‘the Lord God himself knows’, which implies that noone else does). I consider this to be quite a large share and interpret this as a sign that the translators were attentive to expressions of doubt in the source texts.

As for comments on the further development of events, the large corpus contains a total of 19 occurrences of vremja okažet/vremja pokažet/vremja ukažet ‘time will show/reveal’. Although we have seen in examples like number (6) (cf. also example (12)) that such comments could easily be left out, they were translated often enough for the Russian phrases to be formulaic: the German source texts usually use the expressions gibt die Zeit and lehret die Zeit, which were, however, not translated literally as ‘time will give’ and ‘time will teach’, respectively. The Dutch newspapers did not use such phrases to any great extent.

8. Expressing hearsay

Hearsay and doubt in the truthfulness of the information could be expressed not only by comments belonging to the functional vocabulary, but also in the way of phrasing the news content itself.

This is a matter of expressing evidentiality, i.e. “the marking of the source of the information of the statement” (de Haan 2001, 201). More specifically, when the source of the information is something related by others (i.e. hearsay), we are dealing with a subcategory of evidentiality labeled the reportive (Wiemer 2010, 59) or quotative function (de Haan 2001, 203; Wiemer 2005, 107–108). Wiemer (2010, 103) limits the use of the term quotative to elements connected with literal quotes. As we will see, this distinction can be observed in my material, and I will therefore use the term reportive to refer to reported speech and quotative to refer to quotes.

This part of the study will mainly be based on the small corpus, and I will begin by examining the means that German and Dutch had for characterizing information as hearsay.

8.1. Hearsay in German

In German, the reportive function was often filled by the use of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses (cf. Gloning 1996, 148–50). The use of the subjunctive in such contexts was merely an indicator of indirect speech (cf. Wiemer 2010, 77) and did not necessarily imply that the information was considered to be unreliable. For instance, in the following example from my material, the word gewiß is used in the introductory main clause and the subjunctive in the subordinate clause.

(7) Dieses ist gewiß/ daß die Königl. Copulation noch vor dem künfftigen Reichstage/ welcher auf den 5. Martii fest gestellet ist/ geschehen werde. (Maier 2008, 406)

‘This is certain, that the Royal wedding will take place before the upcoming parliament session, which is scheduled for the 5^th of March.’

The material also contains examples of the use of the indicative in reported speech, as well as instances where the form is morphologically ambiguous and instances where the finite verb form is left out altogether.

8.2. Hearsay in Dutch

In modern Dutch, the subjunctive (formed with the auxiliary verb zou in the singular and zouden in the plural) is not generally used in the reportive function in subordinate clauses. The use of zou(den) in such contexts prompts an evidential-counterfactual or epistemic reading, and a purely reportive function of this construction is very rare (cf. Mortelmans 2009, 181–83). However, the subjunctive can be used in main clauses to indicate that the speaker is not the source of the information and that s/he does not vouch for its veracity (Roels et al. 2007, 191–92). As a matter of fact, it is often used in news reports to indicate unconfirmed information (Mortelmans 2009, 173–78). As far as I am aware, the situation in 17^th-century Dutch has not been studied.

The subjunctive is less frequent in the Dutch source texts in my material than in the German ones, which may suggest that it expressed a higher degree of doubt. In most cases, the indicative is used in Dutch, such as in the following example.

(8) Van Krakou is Advijs, dat den Rijckxdagh op den 15 deser is afgebroken [ … ] (Maier 2008, 612)

‘There is news from Cracow that the parliament session was interrupted on the 15th of this month [ … ]’

However, there are examples such as the following, where expressions of certainty such as sekerlijck ‘surely’ and werdt geconfirmeert ‘is confirmed’ coexist with the subjunctive with soude, indicating that it may also have had a purely reportive function.

(9) Van Constantinopolen is tijdingh/ dat den grooten Heer noch in Morea was/ maer hadde aen de Sultana geschreven dat sekerlijck noch dit jaer met het Hof daer soude komen/ alsoo in ‘t kort meester van Candia verhoopte te zijn; Dit werdt oock van Candia selfs geconfirmeert/ dat niet tegenstaende de couragie van die van binnen/ de Turcken al om aen de wallen waren/ [ … ] (Maier 2008, 604)

‘There is news from Constantinople that the Sultan was still in Morea, but had written to the Sultana that he would surely come this year with the court, just as he hoped shortly to be the master of Candia. This is also confirmed from Candia itself, that, the courage of those within notwithstanding, the Turks were all around the walls [ … ]’

8.3. Hearsay in the Russian translations

In 17^th-century Russian, the reportive and quotative functions were expressed with the help of complementizers or particles, many of which are still in use in present-day Russian.

The most frequent reportive marker in the large corpus is budto (often spelled butto), which occurs 70 times as a complementizer, i.e. with a clausal complement⁵. It had been used since the 16^th century to introduce information marked as hearsay. Because of its additional function of comparison – it can often be translated ‘as if’ – it has an element of irreality, so that when used as a reportive marker, it implies that the information is uncertain or even false (Borkovskij 1973, 90–91; Letučij 2008). Wiemer (2005, 115) remarks that in Polish, Russian and Lithuanian, “quotativity⁶ is [frequently] expressed by items that etymologically derive from the field of comparison.” However, he says, few of them have a dominant quotative (reportive) meaning. This combination of evidential meaning with indications of the speaker’s epistemic stance – i.e. that information marked as hearsay carries overtones of not being entirely trustworthy – is inherent in various languages, including Russian, Polish and Lithuanian (cf. Wiemer 2005, 108), but as we have seen, these two functions were (and, perhaps, are) kept apart to a greater extent in German (and possibly Dutch).

Turning to the present material, the small corpus confirms that the Russian budto expressed a higher degree of skepti­cism than the German or Dutch subjunctive: German or Dutch reported speech with the subjunctive was usually translated using the Russian complementizer čto, which did not in any way imply that the reported information was unreliable. In example (10), for instance, subjunctive forms are used in German, but no doubt in the truthfulness of the information is reflected in the translation, which begins věst′ zděs čto ‘there is news here that’.

(10) a. Mastricht vom 15. Dito.

Allhier hat man von der Wahl eines neuen Pabstes diese Zeitung/ daß nemlich darzu der Cardinal Francisco Albici sey erkohren worden/ seines Alters zwey und sechtzig Jahr/ sein Vater ist gewesen ein Genueser/ seine Mutter aber ist aus dem Kirchlichen Staat bürtig/ er sey ein Herr von besonderer Freymüthigkeit/ der einem jeden sein Gebrechen frey herauszusagen gewohnt/ dagegen aber die Balantz nach der Frantzösischen Seiten halte/ (Maier 2008, 420)

b. Из Галанские земли из города Мастрихта марта въ 15 де

Вѣсть здѣс что в Риму папою избрали кардинала Францишка Албици, члвѣкъ 62 лѣт. обычая добраго и особливые дерзости, всякаго в недостатках разума обличая, держит францужскую страну (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 519)

‘Maastricht [Ru. in Holland], March 15th.

Here there is news about the election of a new pope, namely that the Cardinal Francisco Albici has been chosen [Ru. that Cardinal Francisco Albici has been elected pope in Rome], sixty-two years old, [Ger. his father was from Genoa, his mother from the Holy See;] he is an outspoken man, who is not afraid to speak to people about their faults, who supports the French’

Sometimes, however, the translators used budto, especially when the original news report cited several different sources or when doubt in the veracity of the information was expressed in some other way. The report from March 1670 about Cardinal Albici being elected pope, cited above (and translated without any expression of doubt) turned out not to be true, since he was, in fact, not elected until the end of April (cf. Maier 2008, 47–48). The retraction of this statement, cited in example (11), is expressed with budto in the Russian translation. It can be noted that the German text lacks a finite verb in the subordinate clause daß der Cardinal Albici Pabst worden ‘that the Cardinal Albici has become pope’, and so uses neither the indicative nor the subjunctive.

(11) a. Amsterdam/ vom 21. dito.

Die Zeitung über Mastricht/ daß der Cardinal Albici Pabst worden/ wil mit Italiänischen Briefen nicht continuiren. (Maier 2008, 427)

b. Из Амстрадама марта 21г числа

Грамоты из Мастрихта города вѣдомости чинили, бутто кардиналъ Альбици в папы избранъ, однако ж италиянския грамоты о томъ ничего не вестятъ (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 509)

‘Amsterdam, March 21st.

The news from Maastricht that the Cardinal Albici has become pope has not been confirmed by Italian letters [Ru. Letters from Maastricht reported that Cardinal Albici had been elected pope, but the Italian letters say nothing about this]’

In example (12), it is stated outright that there is conflicting news, and consequently budto is used in the Russian translation. The German expression die Zeit wird aus beyden die Warheit bald geben ‘time will soon tell which of the two is true’, which was rather common in such contexts, is not translated. As has already been mentioned (cf. example (6)), this was typical for these translations (cf. also Maier 2008, 156–57).

(12) a. Wegen Candia variiren die Zeitungen: Uber Augspurg erhällt man alles gutes/ [ … ] Aus Amsterdam hingegen/ daß itziger Zeit die Türcken vielleicht solche schon einhätten/ weiln man mit jüngsten Briefen parlamentiret gehabt: Die Zeit wird aus beyden die Warheit bald geben. Man saget auch/ daß der älteste Herr Graff Königsmarck in Candia sich persönlich befinde (Maier 2008, 397)

b. Ис Кандии вѣсти к намъ приходят будто еще Кандия держитца крѣпко [ … ]а из Амстрадама вѣсти будто Кандия взята также рѣчи проносятся будто графъ Киникъсмаркъ в Кандию прибылъ (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 403)

‘There is varying news about Candia: From Augsburg we have only good news [Ru: From Candia we have news that Candia is still held strongly] [ … ] But from Amsterdam [Ru. there is news] that Candia has [Ger. maybe] been taken [Ger. by the Turks] [Ger. since they have negotiated in recent letters: time will soon tell which of the two is true]. It is also said that the Count Königsmark is in Candia’

There is, however, one counterexample, comparable to examples (7) and (9) above, namely the following, where the phrase podlinnye věsti cooccurs with budto.

(13) Из Венецыи ноября 20г числа

Из розных мѣстъ Турские земли подлинные вѣсти к намъ приходят бутто турские ратные люди из бѣлогородцких мѣстъ такъж и из ыных совокупляютца вмѣсте (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 461)

‘From Venice, November 20th.

From different places in Turkey reliable news reaches us that Turkish troops from Belgorod and from other places are joining forces’

This example is taken from the large corpus, which means that the source text for this particular news report has not been identified and we do not know how it was phrased. This example seems to indicate that budto did not always express doubt in the reliability of the information. However, in view of the numerous instances where it is clearly used in contexts of doubt and conflicting reports, I argue that the use of budto in example (13) is an unusual choice, due perhaps to an error on the translator’s part, or at least to an idiosyncrasy in his language. Another possible explanation may be that podlinnye věsti was such a fixed formula that the translator used it without reflecting on its actual meaning. We have already seen in example (3) that this expression could be used independently of the source text, which points in the same direction.

Russian could also use particles to mark reported speech. The particles deskat′ and mol do not occur at all here, although they were in use at the time, but the particle de occurs 22 times in the large corpus. From a pragmatic point of view, its use differs in some ways from that of the complementizer budto. As Letučij (2008, 223–24) has observed, in modern Russian it is primarily used to refer to a single, concrete speech act, i.e. as a quotative marker. Lazar (2011, 127, 133) emphasizes its use in 17^th-century legal documents, such as transcripts of trials, where it also had the function of signaling quoted speech.

In my material, it is often (although not exclusively) used to mark spoken, not written, information, such as in the following example, where the envoy’s spoken message (introduced by on skazal čto ‘he said that’) is related.

(14) Из Гданска июля 30г числа,

О походе татарскомъ вѣсти еще пребывают а сказываютъ вышло их болши 80000 члвкъ и то послыша здѣ живущему татарскому послу говорили, и онъ сказал что ни о какомъ походе татарскомъ не вѣдаетъ, а хотя де и пошли татарове и они де на Полшу не поидутъ но на иную сторону (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 368)

‘From Gdańsk, July 30th.

There is still news of the Tatar campaign, and they say that more than 80,000 of them have set out, and hearing about this they spoke to the Tatar envoy who lives here, and he said that he knows nothing about any Tatar campaign, and even if [‘he said’] Tatars were setting out they [‘he said’] would not go towards Poland but in the other direction’

The Russian translation of the following passage contains both čto and de. In the German text, the subjunctive is used throughout the relation of Doroshenko’s message.⁷ The Russian translation uses čto in the first element of the reported information, but then switches to de.

(15) a. Nechst verwichnen Dienstag ist ein Officirer von der CronArmee mit Schreiben an Ihr. Königl. Maytt. angelangt/ [ … ] Der Doroßenko hätte der Cron-Armee Nachricht gegeben/ daß er noch 8. Pulcken von Cosacken bey sich hätte/ würde aber durch die Tartern in Czecherin blocquiret gehalten/ verlangete ⁸ hefftig nach Secours auß Pohlen/ und hätte zu dem Ende einen Expressen anhero abgefertiget/ (Maier 2008, 379)

b. в прошлои в вторникъ приѣхалъ началнои члвкъ от корунного воиска с писмами кь его королевскому величеству [ … ] Дорошонко вѣдомость корунному воиску учинилъ, что при нем восмь полков казацкихъ есть, толко де от татар в Чигирине в осаде сидит и ожидают ис Полши выручки, и нарочно де послалъ от себя гонца (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 374)

‘Last Tuesday an officer of the Crown’s army came with letters to His Majesty [ … ] Doroshenko had informed the Crown’s army that he had eight regiments of Cossacks with him, but [‘he said’] he was beset by Tatars in Chyhyryn and wished for help from Poland, and for this reason [‘he said’] he had sent a messenger’

The use of de in first and second person contexts reveals that it could be used not only with reported speech, but also with direct speech. Third-person examples, such as (14), are ambiguous, but the use of the second-person plural pronoun vy in example (16) shows clearly that it is a case of direct speech.

(16) К нам же пришол листъ из города Праги а в нем пишут что в Свѣискои землѣ в городе Калмере причасников болши ста члвкъ было, и какъ имъ из сосуда црковное вино хотѣли давати. тот сосуд роздался на двое, и учинился со воздуху глас того де ради такъ учинилося что вы не вѣруете католицкие вѣры, и вскоре пременение учинитца вашеи вѣре (Vesti-Kuranty 2009, 537)

‘A letter has come from Prague, and it says that in Sweden, in the town of Kalmar, there were more than one hundred people who were taking communion, and as they were being given wine from the chalice, that chalice split in two, and a voice was heard from the air: ‘This [‘it said’] happened because you do not believe in the Catholic faith, and soon there will be a change in your faith’.’

The comparison of the source texts with the Russian translations shows that the translators were aware of the differences in use between the German (and to some extent Dutch) subjunctive and the constructions with the Russian complementizer budto, and that they took the whole context into consideration when translating.

We can also observe here that the particle de was reserved for quoting spoken information, and that there was thus a distinction between the reportive and the quotative function.

9. Conclusions

This study shows that although the Russian translations arose under different circum­stances than the German and Dutch originals, and even though comments on the reliability of the reports were not needed for the same purposes, the translators usually took care to understand the position of the news correspondents or publishers and express it in their translations. The reliability judgment must have been of interest to the tsar and the noblemen, and therefore these expressions filled a pragmatic function, albeit not identical to the one they had in the original newspapers. This issue could shed some light on questions that are of interest to historians, such as the role of the Russian news translations and their impact on Muscovite foreign policy.

Expressions for a high degree of reliability are found in the form of more or less fixed formulas, both in the source texts and in the Russian translations, but the Russian expressions show less variation, and usually consisted of a form of the adjective podlinnyj or the adverb podlinno with a noun meaning ‘news’, věst′ or vědomost′. In the translations from Dutch, the adverb izvěstno could also be used.

Expressions for doubt show a more heterogeneous picture. Sometimes they were quite faithfully translated, sometimes they were left out, leaving the translation sounding much more certain than the source text. Expressions referring to the further development of events were left out particularly often. This inconsistent treatment is difficult to explain. Perhaps different translators had different views on the importance of conveying uncertainty, or perhaps restrictions of time or space sometimes caused them to leave out everything that did not contain facts.

As for indicators of hearsay, the Russian use of budto is more restricted than the German (and, partly, Dutch) use of the subjunctive in subordinate clauses, due to a closer link between the reportive function and doubt in the veracity of the information in Russian.

As stated above, these results suggest that the translators usually took care to express the reliability of the news. From a pragmatic perspective, this shows that this particular function was probably of interest to the Russian policymakers and important to convey. As a contrast, expressions of the type “time will tell” were often omitted. Perhaps the translators felt that they could not promise that “time would tell” anything; not only did they not know how events would unfold (which of course applied to the authors of the source texts as well), but they may also have felt uncertain as to if and when they would receive further newspaper reports on the topic in question. Nevertheless, such expressions were frequent enough for them to be translated into Russian using fixed formulas.

There may be several reasons for the use of more formulaic language in the translations than in the source texts. To begin with, fixed formulas and genre-specific features were typical of early Russian texts in general, due to the language situation. Furthermore, the source texts were written by a large number of correspondents and printed in many different newspapers, whereas the translations were made by a small circle of people. Beljakov (2002, 319–407) has identified nine people who translated from German during these years, one person who translated from Dutch, and one person who translated from both German and Dutch. The translators knew each other, probably learned from each other and influenced each other, which means that a single person’s idiosyncrasies might influence the formulaic tradition, and that genre-specific features could develop fairly quickly in the close-knit chancery environment. The existence of formulaic expressions in the Russian news translations motivates further research on possible genre-specific features in these texts. A comparison of the texts analyzed in this article with Vesti-Kuranty-translations from an earlier time period, when they were a new phenomenon and probably not as established as a genre, may yield interesting results.

ORCID

Christine Watson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2472-3855

Notes

1 The research on which this paper is based was funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) through grant no. RFP12-0055:1. I am grateful to professor Ingrid Maier, Uppsala University, for her comments on an earlier version of this paper.

2 In Maier’s edition of the source texts, italics are used for words that are written in Roman script in newspapers mainly printed in Gothic letters, and in the edition of the Russian translations, italics are used for superscript letters in the manuscript. In this article, I ignore both these uses and instead use italics to highlight the expressions under discussion in each example.

3 Where possible, the English translations correspond to both the German/Dutch and Russian quotes, and are therefore sometimes approximate. When the languages differ substantially, the diverging readings are given in square brackets, introduced by ‘Ger.’, ‘Du.’ or ‘Ru.’, respectively.

4 Maier (2008, 404–405) also comments on the erroneous translation of notificiren as ‘confirm’, adding that the king of Spain had in fact not died at this time (November 1669), but died only in the following year. Rumors about his death were frequent, but in this case, the translator made the report seem like more than a rumor.

5 It also occurs three times in a comparative meaning, without indicating hearsay, and once as a particle.

6 In the article from 2005, Wiemer does not make the distinction between reportive and quotative that he makes in his 2010 article.

7 Since the whole passage is in turn presented as the content of letters to the Crown’s army, the subjunctive (hätte … gegeben) is used in the main clause as well.

8 This form is morphologically ambiguous, in that it can be either indicative or subjunctive, but because of the surrounding subjunctive forms, I choose to interpret it as a subjunctive as well.