The translators who shook the world: journalists and translators in the Russian Revolution

ABSTRACT

Shortly after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in February 1917, foreign newspapers and news agencies dispatched some of their best journalists, including a group of highly rated women reporters, to send their chronicles from a conflict which left an enduring memory in their lives. Most correspondents who travelled to Russia soon realised that their news coverage would depend on their recruitment of translators, interpreters, or other language mediators. Drawing on a selection of historical, journalistic and translation research sources, as well as on a number of memoirs, personal accounts and biographies of foreign correspondents, in this article we examine a number of unexplored topics related to the complementary and sometimes contradictory relationship between journalists and translators and interpreters during the Russian Revolution: (a) the demanding communication issues faced by foreign correspondents on their arrival in the country; (b) the meaningful contribution, frequently obscured in journalistic accounts, of translators or interpreters in the newsgathering process; (c) the ambivalent relationship between journalists and translators and how their divergent political ideologies might have interfered with their bond of trust; and (d) the role of correspondents within activist networks, especially in the Bolshevik party, when performing propaganda activities, which included diverse translation assignments.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalistic translation
• history of translation
• translation and conflict
• translation and activism
• Russian Revolution

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article was written during a research visit at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, financed by the Plan for Scientific Research and Transfer of the University of Malaga (Spain).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marcos Rodríguez-Espinosa

Dr Marcos Rodríguez-Espinosa is Tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Malaga (Spain), where he lectures at the BA and the MA in Translation Studies. He has been co-director of the MA in Translation for the Publishing Industry, PhD Programme in ‘Linguistics, Literature and Translation’, and has translated and edited English and North American classic authors for leading Spanish publishing houses. His main research interests include literary translation, history of translation, translation and journalism and translation in conflict and in exiled communities.