Events of the past few years have shaken numerous paradigms, highlighting the extent of global interconnectedness. The swift dissemination of COVID-19, groundbreaking advancements in AI, and alarming armed conflicts, among other occurrences, have catalysed rapid and sometimes unpredictable economic and social transformations on a global scale. These events have evoked strong emotions, significantly influencing political sentiments worldwide.
Current events have also sparked a debate in the humanities regarding the unequal recognition of research originating from diverse regions and linguistic backgrounds. In response to the Russo-Ukrainian war, fields such as Slavic studies, East European studies, Eurasian studies, and translation studies have shifted their focus to Ukraine while simultaneously endeavouring to decolonize knowledge production. In my 2022 review essay discussing Brian James Baer’s Queer Theory and Translation Studies (2020) and Queering Translation History. Shakespeare’s Sonnets in Czech and Slovak Transformations (2021) by Eva Spišiaková, I argued for a nuanced understanding of cultural dynamics, placing emphasis on collaboration rather than paternalistic attitudes (Hostová 2022). The call for the necessity of reciprocal engagement and rejection of the portrayal of cultures as perpetual victims – instead advocating for mutual respect and a genuine desire to learn from one another – is still pressing. By challenging existing infrastructures and fostering internal collaboration, “peripheral” cultures (Heilbron 1999) can generate research that benefits both local and international audiences which are notoriously difficult to reach for cultures like Slovak or Ukrainian one which struggle to extricate themselves from obscurity (cf. e.g., Hostová 2023). The urgency of cooperation, hospitality, and ongoing interaction in addressing complex societal issues – within the realm of translation studies – and outside it is critical. The idea for this discussion sprang by my decade-long research into the issue of cultures and knowledges remaining chronically invisible on the global map.
Surges and dips in positions of languages and literatures in intricate webs of cultural flows and hierarchies and the search for the reasons behind these shifts are topics frequently discussed when attempting to understand and explain power relations in regions that have experienced pronounced totalitarian regimes, including the Soviet one. However, interactions between (cultural) groups in general are rarely equal and navigating these requires actors entangled in these networks and/or engaging with them to account for their position in these landscapes – and in the research process. This dialogic essay is based on the discussion held at the conference Translation, Interpreting & Culture: Virality and Isolation in the Era of Deepening Divides held in Bratislava, Slovakia in September 2023, addresses issues pertaining to translation and interpreting related power dynamics in the light of current political, economic, and cultural developments.
The discussion aims to tackle the challenges posed by power hierarchies within academia, the unequal positioning of researchers within the globalized knowledge market, and the notion of translation as a fundamental right within the framework of economic relationships. In what follows, three speakers with different geographic, economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds approach the question of how might research and academia respond to prevailing power hierarchies and disparities in visibility and whether such structures can be challenged or altered. This inquiry pertains to disrupting the prevailing order that disproportionately favours powerful entities over weaker ones, such as dominant languages, economically robust nations, extensive literary traditions, historically significant regions, and research originating from prestigious universities, which may be more accessible (also production-wise) to scholars from privileged economic backgrounds.
Besides these issues, Daniele Monticelli from Tallinn University, Oleksandr Kalnychenko from National University of Kharkiv and Matej Bel University, and Martin Djovčoš from Matej Bel University approach the issue of how subjectivity inherent in research (sources of funding, national affiliations, and personal values, etc.) influences the researcher’s approach. They delve into considerations of researcher positionality throughout the research process, exploring ethical dimensions and analyse criteria to define appropriate boundaries when appropriating research topics, aiming for inclusivity and participation. In this respect, topical issues also concern the question of whether it is appropriate for researchers to investigate the literature and cultural aspects of minority groups to which they do not belong and if so, what ethical considerations should be taken into account (e.g. Should research teams be composed of members from minority groups when studying topics related to those groups?).
Finally, discussants also explore the question of when translation to or from a language with a limited number of (often bilingual) speakers is necessary and what implications the act of (non)translation has. They approach the issue of translation in the context of linguistic minorities and economically disadvantaged groups. These often receive information primarily in the majority language, since depending on translation in such cases can delay or impede access to crucial information. On the other hand, the absence of translations into minority languages risks eroding linguistic identity and cultural heritage. While volunteering may serve as a form of resistance, its long-term viability is tied to individuals’ economic realities. Balancing the imperative to translate with individual economic needs over extended periods presents a complex problem that needs to be addressed on an individual basis.
I think that before we start using notions such as “isolation” and “virality” or “connectedness”, we should reflect on the way in which the new digital condition, that inform our lives, has changed the sense of these notions and the relations between them. Even more than in the context of the present wars in Ukraine and Gaza, we have experienced it in a particularly painful way in the context of another crisis – the Covid-19 pandemic. During the lockdown we have been pushed into an unprecedented situation of isolation and, at the same time, hyper-connectedness. We spent many hours a day behind the screens of our computers, participating online in many events that we probably would never have physically attended, expanding our networks and connections. But we could not, I think, evade a feeling of isolation and loneliness, which for many people (particularly young people) has been a rather traumatic experience with a negative psychological impact. So, what does isolation really mean in a world where we spend an increasing amount of our time in a digitally mediated environment? How does this reshape human relations and connections? What does it mean to break out of isolation in such a context? To have thousands of followers, views, digital friends in the internet, or maybe rather to shut down our computers and get out to meet people in the real world?
It is interesting to consider what isolation and virality mean also from an academic perspective. Academic institutions have long ceased to work as isolated ivory towers. Research has become for the most part a cooperative enterprise also in the humanities and societal impact and knowledge exchange are fundamental criteria for research funding decisions. However, the present situation of permanent crisis is quite challenging for scholars, because even if we have broken out of isolation and feel a responsibility to address these crises, research is by nature a slow enterprise and it implies distance from the phenomena we study.
Like me, I think you have also experienced in this respect as scholars and students in the humanities a certain hopelessness when facing the crises of our times. On the one hand, the attempt to decelerate and create the distance needed for research and understanding is constantly frustrated by the tidal waves of always new crises about which we are immediately asked to take a position, say something smart and hastily rethink our research topics in order for them to continue to be relevant. But clearly a full and committed immersion into the crises make it difficult to work, to think and to study. So, a certain degree of isolation and disconnectedness seems to be a necessary condition for research.
The war has made the issue of isolation a particularly painful one in another respect too. Namely, while as scholars we have always promoted the values of dialogue and openness, we have now been called to enforce isolation. After Russia invaded the Ukraine, some Estonian universities made the decision of excluding from admission Russian and Belorussian student candidates. With many other Estonian and international colleagues, we initially protested against this discrimination, arguing that many of those perspective students were most probably young people fleeing their country as they oppose Putin’s regime and the war. Why should we isolate them too? was our argument. Now, almost two years have gone since this terrible war started and I am not so sure about this argument: we have chosen a side in the war and we should do all in our power to internationally isolate its enemy and diminish its influence not only in world economics and politics, but also in culture, sport and the academia, focusing at the same time on supporting Ukrainian students and colleagues. I guess this is just what war does.
That’s why I think we should push further in the decolonization of Slavic and Eastern European Studies. It is not a question of “erasing” Russian culture, but of 1) critically revisiting its imperialist and aggressive aspects, just as it was done for German culture after WWII and 2) to give space and voices to the many other cultures, literatures and languages in Eastern Europe that has been until now at best considered as satellites or small brothers of Russia. This is an important opportunity to break out of isolation for Eastern Europe as a whole and we should not miss it.
Finally, recent crises have become also an occasion to rethink isolation and connectedness from the perspective of translation. In the minds of most of us translation is pre-eminently understood as a builder of bridges, which brings cultures and people closer to one another. This comes from our commitment with intercultural dialogue and openness to diversity as universal values. We are at present increasingly understanding that translation is not only this, as it has historically had different and also opposite functions. It has been and continue to be also an instrument to affirm cultural and linguistic identities, not a bridge, but rather a gatekeeper, which maintains the distance between the source and the target culture and language. This was the case for instance with translation from Russian into the Ukrainian in the 1920s and 1930s. The very fact of translating marked the difference of the Ukrainian language from the Russian one and the difference of Ukrainian cultural identity from Russian cultural identity – translation establishes here a distance and keeps a distance. That’s why Ukrainian translations of Russian works, Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries and more generally books in Ukrainian were suspicious to Tsarist as well as Soviet authorities, which aimed to erase differences, making of Ukraine a “little Russia” in which translation from Russian was superfluous and harmful. So, we must learn to notice and appreciate the cases when translation function as a gatekeeper and a generator of difference and identity (isolation in a sense) as much as we notice and appreciate the cases in which translation builds bridges, enhance connections, crosses differences.
I think we should always address the issue of privilege and marginalisation, in all the situations in which we are involved as scholar as well as human being. And we should commit with equality not in the Soviet and socialist sense, but rather in the perspective of radical democracy, like it has been suggested, for instance, by French philosopher Jacques Rancière (1991). For Rancière, equality is a presumption that we are asked to verify in every social relation (academic relations included). This verification always starts from the exposure and dispute of some wrong and inequality (specific privileges and marginalisations), that must be corrected in order for the presumption of equality to be confirmed. So, equality is never a final achievement, but rather this infinite process of verification which addresses always new forms of privilege and marginalization.
As for the academia, I think there is no copyright on research topics – so we are all free to choose any topic, even if someone other is already working on it. But, of course, we cannot ignore this, and the best way to take it into account is to start a cooperation between scholars working on the same topic. Research is anyway a collective enterprise and we all are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants and it is bad that we have come to understand ideas as some kind of private property. The fundamental issues for me are here stability, inclusivity, and accessibility of research. First, in order to avoid privileges and marginalization and to secure the sustainability of research teams and fields we need much more base funding for research in Europe, as competitive project-based research is unstable and unequally and unreasonably distributed. The majority of money for research projects do not go to the universities with the best scholars and ideas, but to the ones with the best project writers and research support structure. Second, we need universal accessibility to all research outputs. The present open access system is a scandal as it transfers a huge amount of research money to academic publishing corporations and it is often a privilege of the richer universities, which have also the best libraries and access to the most expensive research databases. For the moment, grassroot and free sharing (including “pirate” initiatives like Sci-Hub and Libgen) is a good way of counterbalancing such inequalities, but for the future we need a new copyright system, which would grant to all of humanity unlimited and free access to all research publications. This is the prerequisite for real equality of opportunities in the academia.
I think sometimes it makes sense to speak of the necessity of translating some text – think for instance to the necessity to make accessible laws and regulations of a given country to linguistic minorities living in that country. But for instance in the case of literature, it is not so much a matter of necessity, rather of cultural richness. As we very well know literary translation not only makes accessible a foreign text to people who do not read in foreign languages, but it is has always played an important role in the development of target languages and cultures too. In general, as a kind of general principle, we could say that the more linguistic variations of a certain text we have, the better. A translation is always a particular way of interpreting a text, a particular view on that text, so every new translation in principle enriches also the initial source text.
As for policy makers, I think they have for sure the duty to grant translation wherever it is necessary in order to respect linguistic rights and the principle of linguistic equality. The key issue is here resources and quality – that is, policy makers have to understand that not every person, who knows a foreign language is a translator/interpreter, they have to set up qualification and quality standards and be ready to spend enough money for translation and interpreting services. Volunteering is always good, as it is nice when people directly engage in community activities, all are happier. But this cannot replace public services and professional interpreting/translation. So, when volunteering, we should at the same time commit in a struggle to raise the awareness of policy makers on linguistic rights and the need to invest public money in language services, which includes investing money in the training of interpreters and translators at universities and other institutions.
As for literature, I think that we need also here state policies, which would counterbalance the mere logic of the market. State funding of culture should include support to the translation of important texts with a possibly limited readership.
Power hierarchies in academia
In translation studies, addressing existing hierarchies in power and visibility is crucial for fostering a more equitable and inclusive scholarly landscape. In this connection, we can discuss gender, racial, and ethnic hierarchies, postcolonial translation… But here is the issue I want to focus on: Translation studies often grapples with the tension between global knowledge centers, predominantly concentrated within Western academic institutions and local knowledge (indigenous practices and thinking on translation). Power imbalances revolve around the privileging of certain forms of knowledge. If we want to challenge Western-centric views of translation, we need to make other – politically previously non-Western – perspectives distinctly visible.
In the 1920s, Eastern Europe initiated systematic research into translation, while the West’s conceptualization of translation gained momentum after World War II. However, Europe’s division into capitalist West and communist East created barriers to scholarly exchange, driven by geopolitical, linguistic, and ideological disparities. Eastern and Central European nations developed their own translation traditions, but unfortunately, many key texts from this region remain untranslated in Western languages. As a result, global academic audiences[U1] have limited access to these crucial works. Despite occasional contacts, Western knowledge of Eastern European translation theories remains incomplete (with a focus primarily on the Russian and Czechoslovakian Schools). Meanwhile, the scholars from the 1950s and 1960s in Eastern and Central Europe laid the groundwork for the translation studies of the 1970s, even if their influence has been overlooked (for details see Kalnychenko and Kolomiyets 2024). So, it’s crucial to recognize the impact of Eastern European theoretical schools on each other and acknowledge their contribution to the field of translation studies.
According to a 2020 paper by Brian James Baer, the standard narrative of the discipline’s history, where TIS (translation and interpreting studies) remains predominantly represented as a Western scholarly tradition originating in the 1970s, constitutes a ‘mythhistory’. Baer highlights a crucial aspect often overlooked in the dominant narrative of TIS: the geographical diversity of its origins. For instance, this dominant discourse disregards the fact that translation studies had already been introduced as a formal academic subject at the university level in Kyiv and Moscow in the early 1930s (Kalnychenko and Kamovnikova 2020; Kolomiyets 2020).
It's true that recently Central and Eastern European translation scholarship has been gaining international attention, shedding light on theoretical approaches and translation traditions that were previously overlooked in Western discourse (see, e.g., Schippel and Zwischenberger 2017). In this regard, Nothing Happened: Translation Studies before James Holmes, a conference held at UCL, London, 9–10 November, 2023, and co-organized by the UCL Centre for Translation Studies and School of Slavonic and East European Studies, was symptomatic, as is the anthology Translation Studies before James Holmes: A Critical Reader, being compiled under the editorship of Kathryn Batchelor and Iryna Odrekhivska.
A good example of a work that aims to avoid Western and Anglo-American bias in TIS and to explore non-Western thinking on translation as vital components of global TIS history is The Routledge Handbook of the History of Translation Studies (Lange, Monticelli, and Rundle, 2024).
It also has to be stressed that scholarship is practiced on local, national, and transnational levels, all worthy of analysis. Knowledge on translation is produced locally but validated globally. And as long as national systems of higher learning exist one should take into account national scholarly traditions.
In the early 1970s, there were several programmatic suggestions for a science of translation as a separate discipline. Thus, Viktor Koptilov, in 1971, mapped literary translation studies in his article “Perekladoznavstvo yak okrema haluz filolohii” [Translation studies as a separate branch of philology] (1971), holistically elaborated in his 1972 book. Anton Popovič, in the same 1971 year, outlined his conception of the science of translation, introducing his classification of translation theory as a discipline (Popovič 1971) (expanded in 1975 book). However, James Holmes’ mapping as presented in his English article “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” (1972) became foundational, in no small part due to its visualization by Gideon Toury (1995). Thus, presentation of a scholarly work is of paramount importance and serves as an advantage in spreading ideas (see Djovčoš and Perez 2017).
Trajectories traced by theories
Research ethics in the humanities encompasses considerations of the situatedness and geopolitics of knowledge, as well as the complexities surrounding knowledge translation or non-translation and the manner in which knowledge is conveyed. The issue of the research ethics in TIS encompasses several aspects. These include the presumed “Western” identity[U2] of translation studies and the dominant “Western” thinking in the theorization of translation (see, e.g., van Doorslaer and Naaijkens 2021), the researcher’s positionality and associated power dynamics, as well as the awareness that knowledge is formed and adopted differently in different languages. By positionality of the researcher, one means the social and political context that creates their identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability status and describes how their identity influences, and potentially biases, their understanding of and outlook on the world. It is also desirable to consider different languages and cultures in translation research. Additionally, ethical considerations arise when disseminating research findings and sharing research data (see, e. g., Mellinger and Baer 2021).
It is not for nothing that one of the functions of the history of translation studies is to establish historical justice. It so happened that during the twentieth century the works of Ukrainian translation scholars written in Ukrainian were subjected to a double erasure. On the one hand, since the mid-1930s, when the Bolsheviks adopted the position of Russian chauvinism, it became politically incorrect to refer to and quote Ukrainian publications in the USSR, as "Ukrainian nationalism" was proclaimed by Stalin to be the main enemy of the Soviet power. On the other hand, the Cold War confrontation did not contribute to the dissemination of information in the West about the findings of Ukrainian translation scholars. Here is just one example. Professor of Kharkiv University and the author the first book-length work in Eastern Europe on the theory of translation Teoriia i praktika perekladu [The Theory and Practice of Translation] (1929), Oleksander Finkel was perhaps the first scholar anywhere to treat in a systematic way the topic of self-translation. As early as August 1928, a 29-year-old researcher wrote in Ukrainian the article “H.F. Kvitka as the Translator of His Own Works” (13, 438 words), printed next year in a scholarly collection to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Ukrainian writer Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. Thirty-three years later, Finkel published the Russian article “Ob avtoperevode” [“On Autotranslation: (Based on material relating to Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s authorial translations)”] (7, 184 words) in Leningrad, which is, in fact, a self-translation of his own 1929 article. It is to this 1962 Russian article that Anton Popovič referred both in his seminal work Teória umeleckého prekladu (1975) and in his Dictionary for the Analysis of Literary Translation (1976: 18), containing the entry on auto-translation, which introduced the concept in English-speaking countries. However, for some reason, none of the authors of English-language articles on auto-translation (later self-translation) in various encyclopaedias and handbooks for more than 30 years had noticed that the definition of this concept in Popovič 's dictionary contains Finkel's name in parentheses. It was only in the last decade that references to Finkel's writings on auto-translation appeared in the The bibliography on self-translation maintained by Eva Gentes (2023), and an English translation of a 1962 article (by Mercedes Bullock) was published in the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies. It would seem that historical justice has been done. However, this is not entirely true, as the English-speaking readership was introduced to the translation of the 1962 Russian article. When comparing the Ukrainian article of 1929 and the Russian article of 1962, one can see that both texts describe one and the same research based on author translations by Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, use the same numerous examples, letters, and nearly the same argumentation, with several paragraphs self-translated literally. In the meantime, twice as large 1929 version provides more details on Kvitka’s personal and social motifs to translate his own works; it also pays closer attention to theoretical issues. In his Russian article of 1962, Finkel quite clearly avoids discussion of any socially provocative issues, such as ethnic bilingualism, problems of stylistic differences between the Russian and Ukrainian languages, and socially distinct readership, as well as issues of censorship. Hence, although it has a more clearly delineated structure, the 1962 article lacks the young Finkel's observations on power relations. We can only hope that the first version will eventually be translated into major languages, that it will truly enter international circulation as the classic work that it is, and then we can say that justice has been done.
“Minor” versus “major”
The influence of languages’ majority or minority status on translation practice is a fundamental point. Minority-language cultures heavily rely on translation for their informational demands, their economic, scientific, and cultural life. As Michael Cronin remarked, the concept of minority in TIS is a dynamic and relational one (Cronin 2020). It emphasizes the fact that all languages have the potential to be minority languages. Even major world languages, like Mandarin, can occupy a peripheral position in specific domains such as science and technology. A language may be marginalized due to invasion, conquest, or subjugation by a more powerful group. Ukraine under Russian rule in the 1800s can serve as a quintessential case of such a suppression in modern culture, especially during the repressions and prohibitions of Ukrainian publications in 1863–1905. Thus, in accordance with the Valuev circular of 1863 to the censorship committees, “the authorization of books in Little Russian with either spiritual content or intended generally for primary mass reading should be ceased” (Quoted as in Miller 2003: 264). Tsar Alexander II's Ems Decree of 1876 completely banned the printing of any translations into Ukrainian as well as any import of books translated into that language. The only parallel of this language ban that I know is the ban of the Irish language under Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century. Yet, in 1882, Mykhailo Starytsky published his translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a separate book in Kyiv. How did he do it? The writer’s daughter Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska admitted in a letter to Ivan Franko (16 December 1901) that the Ems ban had been circumvented with the help of a hundred-ruble bribe to the Kyiv censor Leimitz. To increase the likelihood of obtaining permission to publish in Russia, translators would occasionally send several versions of their translated texts under different names and pseudonyms to different censorship committees at the same time. A strategy to circumvent censorship was the publication of translations of foreign works as original works of Ukrainian literature. For instance, Borys Hrinchenko had to turn Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Prisoner in the Caucasus into the story The Black Sea Men in Captivity. One more way to circumvent the ban on printing translations into Ukrainian was to publish the books abroad and then smuggle them into the Russian Empire.
All these ways to bypass censorship barriers mean that we should take into account the non-systemic aspects of the context and the unpredictable interference of random events, that we should not ignore the fundamental importance of interpersonal relations, i.e., net of relations, acquaintances, schoolmates, neighbors, etc. in which people made favors in exchange for other favors bypassing generally accepted rules and laws in the intercourse with, e.g., censorial agencies, as Daniele Monticelli (2020) has demonstrated recently when he described such useful connections: the person responsible for reading the Estonian translated literature book series proofs at Glavlit (the Soviet censorship agency) was one of the Editor-in-Chief’s university groupmates and that allowed to lessen the obstacles of Soviet censorship.
Translation can play an important role in the nation-building for subjugated peoples by establishing boundaries between cultures. Whereas in the early 1920s, the common view was that translations of Russian belles-lettres into Ukrainian were pointless waste of means and effort, as an average Ukrainian reader could read any work of Russian literature in the original, the late 1920s witnessed abundant Ukrainian translations of Russian prose, which pointed to the separateness of the Ukrainian language and culture (see Kalnychenko and Kolomiyets 2022). Recently, Lada Kolomiets and I have been researching Russian-Ukrainian literary translation over the past hundred years (before 1917 there was practically no fiction translated from Russian into Ukrainian). This study (Kolomiyets and Kalnychenko 2024) proves that Russian-Ukrainian translation has both bright and dark sides. On the one hand, these are translations of Russian poetry by neoclassicists in mid-1920s, philologically accurate translations of the collected works of Gogol and Chekhov, and other achievements of the Ukrainian translation school, which was born in the late 1920s and early 1930s and was theoretically justified accordingly; on the other hand, through the Russian language and translations from Russian, the Soviet cultural space was established, which was deliberately isolated from the world cultural space and was supposed to replace it, contributing to the Russification of the Ukrainian language and the provincialization of Ukrainian literature.
When an empire disintegrates and national boundaries are redrawn, it can result in a shift where a previously dominant language becomes a minority one. The case of Russian in Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union serves as an example of this phenomenon. Moreover, after 24 February, 2024, Russian ended up being completely excluded from the public sphere in Ukraine. Overall rejection and denunciation of Russian literary products is now, for many in Ukraine, not just an aesthetic choice in a struggle for cultural identity. It is an existential necessity.
The topic of this discussion, as suggested by its title, is virality and isolation. Nevertheless, despite different vocabulary, I believe that once again we are talking about one of the key issues pertinent to translation studies at least since polysystem theory in nineteen seventies – namely about the relationships between centres and peripheries. The issue might not be new, but like many other social phenomena connected with different distribution of power, it remains topical. The problem of inclusion and exclusion (of people, ideas, paradigms) has been reframed here to reflect the changing, and (although I hate to use this buzz word, the reality it names has become ubiquitous) digitalising world. It is clear tough that the central idea – unequal distribution of power – remains the same, although mechanisms change. With new information and knowledge – often, unfortunately, also pseudoknowledge – reaching global audiences literally instantly, it may get very hard to navigate the world and follow all relevant new developments. I believe that in this situation, rationalism can prove useful even today and indeed may be crucial now more than ever if we are to be able to critically evaluate rights and wrongs.
One of the key issues here, as suggested in the introductory remarks, certainly is striving for the empowerment of marginalised groups as the effort is to give voice to voiceless (authors, cultures, texts, organisations) has long been one of the main goals of translation and translation studies. However, I would like to speak about marginalised ideas. Ideas travel, they are not national, but can be prevented from spreading or be marginalised by nationalism/imperialism and get rediscovered again once circumstances change – e.g. when ideological restrictions are removed. One current example of this is the rediscovering of (older and current) research of translation and interpreting that originated in Ukraine and its dissemination in English (cf., e.g., publications by Oleksandr Kalnychenko (2023), Lada Kolomiyets (2023), Taras Shmiher (2014), or Iryna Odrekhivska (2021)). This shift as I see it is not about ideas (not) having existed, but about having or not having reached their audiences. Once ideas find perceptive audience, they may even go viral and create a new centre which may lead to a revision of canonical ideas and rewriting of translation history. In the case of translation and interpreting in Ukraine and other post-totalitarian countries, this would mean freeing the history of narratives imposed on the commanded territories by the Soviet hegemony, which colonised memes of translation on this side of the Iron curtain. I remember a conference in Kharkiv in 2019, where to my amazement scholars were talking about things I never heard before. Although most of the presentations were in Ukrainian, I was able to grasp their main message. From some presentations on translation history, it was quite clear that through reconstructing historical patterns in translation practice and agenda during the Soviet Union, one could expect the 2022 invasion to happen. After the invasion, the international TS community has finally become more perceptive to what they have to say. And here I wonder, does it really take a war for marginalised groups to be listened to? I also wonder how many interesting ideas there are for us to learn from in other countries that, at the moment, we are ignorant of listening to. All knowledge is fragmented, therefore one needs to be very careful when formulating “generally valid” statements. However, I would like to make myself very clear: ideas/narratives/stories belong to all, they are not national and they need to travel and, as Vanessa Andreotti would say, dance with people in different contexts.
We are talking here also about drastic and hardly “followable/predictable” changes. I believe that translation studies, particularly the examination of translation history, has the potential to forecast future developments. Translation serves as a litmus test for societal changes and advancements. It requires constant reinterpretation of facts based on new information as Popper and Bayes invite us to do. The real fun of our research lies therein. Research is not static. It is extremely dynamic. As Taras Shmiher mentioned in his recent lecture in Banská Bystrica (2023) , history deals with interpretation of facts. However, identity bias will always influence the process, which will, despite the effort, never be objective. And yet, I advocate for data-driven interpretation. In other words, we need to draw a strict line between activism/wishful thinking and empiricism. In my opinion, activism should always be based on empirical data. I've had this ongoing discussion with Christopher Rundle on what to do once we know or we think we know. He, as a brilliant translations historian (not a historian of translation studies) focusing on fascism and para-fascism, has a lot of knowledge about mechanisms which drive and fuel the system. Indeed, quite clear patterns are visible. So, what do we do when we see the same (or very similar) pattern recurring today? To know doesn’t mean to stay impartial and quiet. Knowledge is responsibility, and translation carries a lot of knowledge since one of its main goals is to spread it (to whichever purpose this knowledge may serve).
Breaking out of isolation for translation studies as a discipline also means to abandon our comfort zones and internalise power asymmetries which, as I mentioned before, are very dynamic categories.
In other words, the Chesterman’s crucial question (e.g. 2011) remains stilt very relevant: So what? What is the ultimate goal of our efforts? Historical justice? I recall one conversation with a colleague some years ago, when I said I was sick of looking for who was “the first”. He said that I may be right, but it is about looking for historical justice. I understand it as doing justice and recognising previously silenced. However, it's crucial to remember that achieving historical justice doesn't entail rewriting history according to our preferences. That would again mean we give our wishful thinking a superior role, and that must not happen. People frequently perceive what aligns with their desires, and scholars are not exempt from this tendency (e.g., confirmation bias and availability heuristics). Thus, we create these echo chambers where we feel comfortable. Deconstructing these chambers is what breaking out of isolation really means to me. Thus, I strongly advocate against all forms of anti-intellectualism in service of any ideology.
And the issues we are talking about here are only a fragment of translation market. Significant? Major? I doubt. Interesting? Definitely. But let us not forget about everyday translators and interpreters and their work which, I dare say, forms the majority of translation market and habitus and subtly shapes societies at large. Indeed, the social transformative power of translation is remarkable. For example, before 1989, literary translation formed the core of translation market in Slovakia. Universities also focused mainly on teaching literary translation as that was seen as the high art of translation. Certainly, it's important to note that since Slovakia, or rather Czechoslovakia, belonged to the Soviet sphere of influence, publications primarily focused on “friendly” languages and cultures – i.e. politically aligned ones. After 1989, the situation changed dramatically. Not only did the translated languages change (shifting from Russian to English), but also the nature of translation and social demand underwent dramatic changes. A shift towards “pragmatic translation” could be observed, and literary translation began to lag behind, mainly from an economic perspective. Nowadays, as Klaudia Bednárová-Gibová and Mária Majherová (2021) aptly note, literary translation has become a semi-profession. This has also been confirmed by research I conducted with Pavol Šveda (2023), showing that only 1% of translators in our sample (n=350) make their living solely from translating literary texts. However, up to 26% of translators and interpreters in our sample say they sometimes translate books for publishing houses. Oddly enough, based on the research, it seems that most literary translators are content with their social status and satisfied with their work. This means that we find ourselves in a rather paradoxical situation where an abundance of symbolic and cultural capital does not necessarily lead to higher economic capital. In Slovakia, this is also the case for other workers in the cultural sector. Thus, literary translation seems to be more about cultural activism than anything else. Up to 90% of translators mainly depend on technical translation. That being said, it appears that in the future, and even today, a professional translator/interpreter will be the individual who can effectively combine various translatorial activities (such as literary texts, audiovisual translation, technical translation, post-editing, interpreting, etc.) as effectively as possible.
I would say, in general, that there is a call for the emancipation of the translation profession, which subsequently needs to integrate into the wider ecosystem of humanities. I think that we all need to calm down a little bit, take a deep breath, rethink our priorities, and then act accordingly. Slavoj Žižek (2009) warns that we are facing pseudo-activity, the urge to ‘be active’, to ‘participate’, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. He adds that people intervene all the time, ‘doing something’; academics participate in meaningless ‘debates,’ etc.; but the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it all. Thus sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do. Therefore, I call for evidence based/data-driven/and possibly rational activism.
Current events have also sparked a debate in the humanities regarding the unequal recognition of research originating from diverse regions and linguistic backgrounds. In response to the Russo-Ukrainian war, fields such as Slavic studies, East European studies, Eurasian studies, and translation studies have shifted their focus to Ukraine while simultaneously endeavouring to decolonize knowledge production. In my 2022 review essay discussing Brian James Baer’s Queer Theory and Translation Studies (2020) and Queering Translation History. Shakespeare’s Sonnets in Czech and Slovak Transformations (2021) by Eva Spišiaková, I argued for a nuanced understanding of cultural dynamics, placing emphasis on collaboration rather than paternalistic attitudes (Hostová 2022). The call for the necessity of reciprocal engagement and rejection of the portrayal of cultures as perpetual victims – instead advocating for mutual respect and a genuine desire to learn from one another – is still pressing. By challenging existing infrastructures and fostering internal collaboration, “peripheral” cultures (Heilbron 1999) can generate research that benefits both local and international audiences which are notoriously difficult to reach for cultures like Slovak or Ukrainian one which struggle to extricate themselves from obscurity (cf. e.g., Hostová 2023). The urgency of cooperation, hospitality, and ongoing interaction in addressing complex societal issues – within the realm of translation studies – and outside it is critical. The idea for this discussion sprang by my decade-long research into the issue of cultures and knowledges remaining chronically invisible on the global map.
Surges and dips in positions of languages and literatures in intricate webs of cultural flows and hierarchies and the search for the reasons behind these shifts are topics frequently discussed when attempting to understand and explain power relations in regions that have experienced pronounced totalitarian regimes, including the Soviet one. However, interactions between (cultural) groups in general are rarely equal and navigating these requires actors entangled in these networks and/or engaging with them to account for their position in these landscapes – and in the research process. This dialogic essay is based on the discussion held at the conference Translation, Interpreting & Culture: Virality and Isolation in the Era of Deepening Divides held in Bratislava, Slovakia in September 2023, addresses issues pertaining to translation and interpreting related power dynamics in the light of current political, economic, and cultural developments.
The discussion aims to tackle the challenges posed by power hierarchies within academia, the unequal positioning of researchers within the globalized knowledge market, and the notion of translation as a fundamental right within the framework of economic relationships. In what follows, three speakers with different geographic, economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds approach the question of how might research and academia respond to prevailing power hierarchies and disparities in visibility and whether such structures can be challenged or altered. This inquiry pertains to disrupting the prevailing order that disproportionately favours powerful entities over weaker ones, such as dominant languages, economically robust nations, extensive literary traditions, historically significant regions, and research originating from prestigious universities, which may be more accessible (also production-wise) to scholars from privileged economic backgrounds.
Besides these issues, Daniele Monticelli from Tallinn University, Oleksandr Kalnychenko from National University of Kharkiv and Matej Bel University, and Martin Djovčoš from Matej Bel University approach the issue of how subjectivity inherent in research (sources of funding, national affiliations, and personal values, etc.) influences the researcher’s approach. They delve into considerations of researcher positionality throughout the research process, exploring ethical dimensions and analyse criteria to define appropriate boundaries when appropriating research topics, aiming for inclusivity and participation. In this respect, topical issues also concern the question of whether it is appropriate for researchers to investigate the literature and cultural aspects of minority groups to which they do not belong and if so, what ethical considerations should be taken into account (e.g. Should research teams be composed of members from minority groups when studying topics related to those groups?).
Finally, discussants also explore the question of when translation to or from a language with a limited number of (often bilingual) speakers is necessary and what implications the act of (non)translation has. They approach the issue of translation in the context of linguistic minorities and economically disadvantaged groups. These often receive information primarily in the majority language, since depending on translation in such cases can delay or impede access to crucial information. On the other hand, the absence of translations into minority languages risks eroding linguistic identity and cultural heritage. While volunteering may serve as a form of resistance, its long-term viability is tied to individuals’ economic realities. Balancing the imperative to translate with individual economic needs over extended periods presents a complex problem that needs to be addressed on an individual basis.
I think that before we start using notions such as “isolation” and “virality” or “connectedness”, we should reflect on the way in which the new digital condition, that inform our lives, has changed the sense of these notions and the relations between them. Even more than in the context of the present wars in Ukraine and Gaza, we have experienced it in a particularly painful way in the context of another crisis – the Covid-19 pandemic. During the lockdown we have been pushed into an unprecedented situation of isolation and, at the same time, hyper-connectedness. We spent many hours a day behind the screens of our computers, participating online in many events that we probably would never have physically attended, expanding our networks and connections. But we could not, I think, evade a feeling of isolation and loneliness, which for many people (particularly young people) has been a rather traumatic experience with a negative psychological impact. So, what does isolation really mean in a world where we spend an increasing amount of our time in a digitally mediated environment? How does this reshape human relations and connections? What does it mean to break out of isolation in such a context? To have thousands of followers, views, digital friends in the internet, or maybe rather to shut down our computers and get out to meet people in the real world?
It is interesting to consider what isolation and virality mean also from an academic perspective. Academic institutions have long ceased to work as isolated ivory towers. Research has become for the most part a cooperative enterprise also in the humanities and societal impact and knowledge exchange are fundamental criteria for research funding decisions. However, the present situation of permanent crisis is quite challenging for scholars, because even if we have broken out of isolation and feel a responsibility to address these crises, research is by nature a slow enterprise and it implies distance from the phenomena we study.
Like me, I think you have also experienced in this respect as scholars and students in the humanities a certain hopelessness when facing the crises of our times. On the one hand, the attempt to decelerate and create the distance needed for research and understanding is constantly frustrated by the tidal waves of always new crises about which we are immediately asked to take a position, say something smart and hastily rethink our research topics in order for them to continue to be relevant. But clearly a full and committed immersion into the crises make it difficult to work, to think and to study. So, a certain degree of isolation and disconnectedness seems to be a necessary condition for research.
The war has made the issue of isolation a particularly painful one in another respect too. Namely, while as scholars we have always promoted the values of dialogue and openness, we have now been called to enforce isolation. After Russia invaded the Ukraine, some Estonian universities made the decision of excluding from admission Russian and Belorussian student candidates. With many other Estonian and international colleagues, we initially protested against this discrimination, arguing that many of those perspective students were most probably young people fleeing their country as they oppose Putin’s regime and the war. Why should we isolate them too? was our argument. Now, almost two years have gone since this terrible war started and I am not so sure about this argument: we have chosen a side in the war and we should do all in our power to internationally isolate its enemy and diminish its influence not only in world economics and politics, but also in culture, sport and the academia, focusing at the same time on supporting Ukrainian students and colleagues. I guess this is just what war does.
That’s why I think we should push further in the decolonization of Slavic and Eastern European Studies. It is not a question of “erasing” Russian culture, but of 1) critically revisiting its imperialist and aggressive aspects, just as it was done for German culture after WWII and 2) to give space and voices to the many other cultures, literatures and languages in Eastern Europe that has been until now at best considered as satellites or small brothers of Russia. This is an important opportunity to break out of isolation for Eastern Europe as a whole and we should not miss it.
Finally, recent crises have become also an occasion to rethink isolation and connectedness from the perspective of translation. In the minds of most of us translation is pre-eminently understood as a builder of bridges, which brings cultures and people closer to one another. This comes from our commitment with intercultural dialogue and openness to diversity as universal values. We are at present increasingly understanding that translation is not only this, as it has historically had different and also opposite functions. It has been and continue to be also an instrument to affirm cultural and linguistic identities, not a bridge, but rather a gatekeeper, which maintains the distance between the source and the target culture and language. This was the case for instance with translation from Russian into the Ukrainian in the 1920s and 1930s. The very fact of translating marked the difference of the Ukrainian language from the Russian one and the difference of Ukrainian cultural identity from Russian cultural identity – translation establishes here a distance and keeps a distance. That’s why Ukrainian translations of Russian works, Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries and more generally books in Ukrainian were suspicious to Tsarist as well as Soviet authorities, which aimed to erase differences, making of Ukraine a “little Russia” in which translation from Russian was superfluous and harmful. So, we must learn to notice and appreciate the cases when translation function as a gatekeeper and a generator of difference and identity (isolation in a sense) as much as we notice and appreciate the cases in which translation builds bridges, enhance connections, crosses differences.
I think we should always address the issue of privilege and marginalisation, in all the situations in which we are involved as scholar as well as human being. And we should commit with equality not in the Soviet and socialist sense, but rather in the perspective of radical democracy, like it has been suggested, for instance, by French philosopher Jacques Rancière (1991). For Rancière, equality is a presumption that we are asked to verify in every social relation (academic relations included). This verification always starts from the exposure and dispute of some wrong and inequality (specific privileges and marginalisations), that must be corrected in order for the presumption of equality to be confirmed. So, equality is never a final achievement, but rather this infinite process of verification which addresses always new forms of privilege and marginalization.
As for the academia, I think there is no copyright on research topics – so we are all free to choose any topic, even if someone other is already working on it. But, of course, we cannot ignore this, and the best way to take it into account is to start a cooperation between scholars working on the same topic. Research is anyway a collective enterprise and we all are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants and it is bad that we have come to understand ideas as some kind of private property. The fundamental issues for me are here stability, inclusivity, and accessibility of research. First, in order to avoid privileges and marginalization and to secure the sustainability of research teams and fields we need much more base funding for research in Europe, as competitive project-based research is unstable and unequally and unreasonably distributed. The majority of money for research projects do not go to the universities with the best scholars and ideas, but to the ones with the best project writers and research support structure. Second, we need universal accessibility to all research outputs. The present open access system is a scandal as it transfers a huge amount of research money to academic publishing corporations and it is often a privilege of the richer universities, which have also the best libraries and access to the most expensive research databases. For the moment, grassroot and free sharing (including “pirate” initiatives like Sci-Hub and Libgen) is a good way of counterbalancing such inequalities, but for the future we need a new copyright system, which would grant to all of humanity unlimited and free access to all research publications. This is the prerequisite for real equality of opportunities in the academia.
I think sometimes it makes sense to speak of the necessity of translating some text – think for instance to the necessity to make accessible laws and regulations of a given country to linguistic minorities living in that country. But for instance in the case of literature, it is not so much a matter of necessity, rather of cultural richness. As we very well know literary translation not only makes accessible a foreign text to people who do not read in foreign languages, but it is has always played an important role in the development of target languages and cultures too. In general, as a kind of general principle, we could say that the more linguistic variations of a certain text we have, the better. A translation is always a particular way of interpreting a text, a particular view on that text, so every new translation in principle enriches also the initial source text.
As for policy makers, I think they have for sure the duty to grant translation wherever it is necessary in order to respect linguistic rights and the principle of linguistic equality. The key issue is here resources and quality – that is, policy makers have to understand that not every person, who knows a foreign language is a translator/interpreter, they have to set up qualification and quality standards and be ready to spend enough money for translation and interpreting services. Volunteering is always good, as it is nice when people directly engage in community activities, all are happier. But this cannot replace public services and professional interpreting/translation. So, when volunteering, we should at the same time commit in a struggle to raise the awareness of policy makers on linguistic rights and the need to invest public money in language services, which includes investing money in the training of interpreters and translators at universities and other institutions.
As for literature, I think that we need also here state policies, which would counterbalance the mere logic of the market. State funding of culture should include support to the translation of important texts with a possibly limited readership.
Power hierarchies in academia
In translation studies, addressing existing hierarchies in power and visibility is crucial for fostering a more equitable and inclusive scholarly landscape. In this connection, we can discuss gender, racial, and ethnic hierarchies, postcolonial translation… But here is the issue I want to focus on: Translation studies often grapples with the tension between global knowledge centers, predominantly concentrated within Western academic institutions and local knowledge (indigenous practices and thinking on translation). Power imbalances revolve around the privileging of certain forms of knowledge. If we want to challenge Western-centric views of translation, we need to make other – politically previously non-Western – perspectives distinctly visible.
In the 1920s, Eastern Europe initiated systematic research into translation, while the West’s conceptualization of translation gained momentum after World War II. However, Europe’s division into capitalist West and communist East created barriers to scholarly exchange, driven by geopolitical, linguistic, and ideological disparities. Eastern and Central European nations developed their own translation traditions, but unfortunately, many key texts from this region remain untranslated in Western languages. As a result, global academic audiences[U1] have limited access to these crucial works. Despite occasional contacts, Western knowledge of Eastern European translation theories remains incomplete (with a focus primarily on the Russian and Czechoslovakian Schools). Meanwhile, the scholars from the 1950s and 1960s in Eastern and Central Europe laid the groundwork for the translation studies of the 1970s, even if their influence has been overlooked (for details see Kalnychenko and Kolomiyets 2024). So, it’s crucial to recognize the impact of Eastern European theoretical schools on each other and acknowledge their contribution to the field of translation studies.
According to a 2020 paper by Brian James Baer, the standard narrative of the discipline’s history, where TIS (translation and interpreting studies) remains predominantly represented as a Western scholarly tradition originating in the 1970s, constitutes a ‘mythhistory’. Baer highlights a crucial aspect often overlooked in the dominant narrative of TIS: the geographical diversity of its origins. For instance, this dominant discourse disregards the fact that translation studies had already been introduced as a formal academic subject at the university level in Kyiv and Moscow in the early 1930s (Kalnychenko and Kamovnikova 2020; Kolomiyets 2020).
It's true that recently Central and Eastern European translation scholarship has been gaining international attention, shedding light on theoretical approaches and translation traditions that were previously overlooked in Western discourse (see, e.g., Schippel and Zwischenberger 2017). In this regard, Nothing Happened: Translation Studies before James Holmes, a conference held at UCL, London, 9–10 November, 2023, and co-organized by the UCL Centre for Translation Studies and School of Slavonic and East European Studies, was symptomatic, as is the anthology Translation Studies before James Holmes: A Critical Reader, being compiled under the editorship of Kathryn Batchelor and Iryna Odrekhivska.
A good example of a work that aims to avoid Western and Anglo-American bias in TIS and to explore non-Western thinking on translation as vital components of global TIS history is The Routledge Handbook of the History of Translation Studies (Lange, Monticelli, and Rundle, 2024).
It also has to be stressed that scholarship is practiced on local, national, and transnational levels, all worthy of analysis. Knowledge on translation is produced locally but validated globally. And as long as national systems of higher learning exist one should take into account national scholarly traditions.
In the early 1970s, there were several programmatic suggestions for a science of translation as a separate discipline. Thus, Viktor Koptilov, in 1971, mapped literary translation studies in his article “Perekladoznavstvo yak okrema haluz filolohii” [Translation studies as a separate branch of philology] (1971), holistically elaborated in his 1972 book. Anton Popovič, in the same 1971 year, outlined his conception of the science of translation, introducing his classification of translation theory as a discipline (Popovič 1971) (expanded in 1975 book). However, James Holmes’ mapping as presented in his English article “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” (1972) became foundational, in no small part due to its visualization by Gideon Toury (1995). Thus, presentation of a scholarly work is of paramount importance and serves as an advantage in spreading ideas (see Djovčoš and Perez 2017).
Trajectories traced by theories
Research ethics in the humanities encompasses considerations of the situatedness and geopolitics of knowledge, as well as the complexities surrounding knowledge translation or non-translation and the manner in which knowledge is conveyed. The issue of the research ethics in TIS encompasses several aspects. These include the presumed “Western” identity[U2] of translation studies and the dominant “Western” thinking in the theorization of translation (see, e.g., van Doorslaer and Naaijkens 2021), the researcher’s positionality and associated power dynamics, as well as the awareness that knowledge is formed and adopted differently in different languages. By positionality of the researcher, one means the social and political context that creates their identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability status and describes how their identity influences, and potentially biases, their understanding of and outlook on the world. It is also desirable to consider different languages and cultures in translation research. Additionally, ethical considerations arise when disseminating research findings and sharing research data (see, e. g., Mellinger and Baer 2021).
It is not for nothing that one of the functions of the history of translation studies is to establish historical justice. It so happened that during the twentieth century the works of Ukrainian translation scholars written in Ukrainian were subjected to a double erasure. On the one hand, since the mid-1930s, when the Bolsheviks adopted the position of Russian chauvinism, it became politically incorrect to refer to and quote Ukrainian publications in the USSR, as "Ukrainian nationalism" was proclaimed by Stalin to be the main enemy of the Soviet power. On the other hand, the Cold War confrontation did not contribute to the dissemination of information in the West about the findings of Ukrainian translation scholars. Here is just one example. Professor of Kharkiv University and the author the first book-length work in Eastern Europe on the theory of translation Teoriia i praktika perekladu [The Theory and Practice of Translation] (1929), Oleksander Finkel was perhaps the first scholar anywhere to treat in a systematic way the topic of self-translation. As early as August 1928, a 29-year-old researcher wrote in Ukrainian the article “H.F. Kvitka as the Translator of His Own Works” (13, 438 words), printed next year in a scholarly collection to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Ukrainian writer Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovyanenko. Thirty-three years later, Finkel published the Russian article “Ob avtoperevode” [“On Autotranslation: (Based on material relating to Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s authorial translations)”] (7, 184 words) in Leningrad, which is, in fact, a self-translation of his own 1929 article. It is to this 1962 Russian article that Anton Popovič referred both in his seminal work Teória umeleckého prekladu (1975) and in his Dictionary for the Analysis of Literary Translation (1976: 18), containing the entry on auto-translation, which introduced the concept in English-speaking countries. However, for some reason, none of the authors of English-language articles on auto-translation (later self-translation) in various encyclopaedias and handbooks for more than 30 years had noticed that the definition of this concept in Popovič 's dictionary contains Finkel's name in parentheses. It was only in the last decade that references to Finkel's writings on auto-translation appeared in the The bibliography on self-translation maintained by Eva Gentes (2023), and an English translation of a 1962 article (by Mercedes Bullock) was published in the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies. It would seem that historical justice has been done. However, this is not entirely true, as the English-speaking readership was introduced to the translation of the 1962 Russian article. When comparing the Ukrainian article of 1929 and the Russian article of 1962, one can see that both texts describe one and the same research based on author translations by Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, use the same numerous examples, letters, and nearly the same argumentation, with several paragraphs self-translated literally. In the meantime, twice as large 1929 version provides more details on Kvitka’s personal and social motifs to translate his own works; it also pays closer attention to theoretical issues. In his Russian article of 1962, Finkel quite clearly avoids discussion of any socially provocative issues, such as ethnic bilingualism, problems of stylistic differences between the Russian and Ukrainian languages, and socially distinct readership, as well as issues of censorship. Hence, although it has a more clearly delineated structure, the 1962 article lacks the young Finkel's observations on power relations. We can only hope that the first version will eventually be translated into major languages, that it will truly enter international circulation as the classic work that it is, and then we can say that justice has been done.
“Minor” versus “major”
The influence of languages’ majority or minority status on translation practice is a fundamental point. Minority-language cultures heavily rely on translation for their informational demands, their economic, scientific, and cultural life. As Michael Cronin remarked, the concept of minority in TIS is a dynamic and relational one (Cronin 2020). It emphasizes the fact that all languages have the potential to be minority languages. Even major world languages, like Mandarin, can occupy a peripheral position in specific domains such as science and technology. A language may be marginalized due to invasion, conquest, or subjugation by a more powerful group. Ukraine under Russian rule in the 1800s can serve as a quintessential case of such a suppression in modern culture, especially during the repressions and prohibitions of Ukrainian publications in 1863–1905. Thus, in accordance with the Valuev circular of 1863 to the censorship committees, “the authorization of books in Little Russian with either spiritual content or intended generally for primary mass reading should be ceased” (Quoted as in Miller 2003: 264). Tsar Alexander II's Ems Decree of 1876 completely banned the printing of any translations into Ukrainian as well as any import of books translated into that language. The only parallel of this language ban that I know is the ban of the Irish language under Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century. Yet, in 1882, Mykhailo Starytsky published his translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a separate book in Kyiv. How did he do it? The writer’s daughter Liudmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska admitted in a letter to Ivan Franko (16 December 1901) that the Ems ban had been circumvented with the help of a hundred-ruble bribe to the Kyiv censor Leimitz. To increase the likelihood of obtaining permission to publish in Russia, translators would occasionally send several versions of their translated texts under different names and pseudonyms to different censorship committees at the same time. A strategy to circumvent censorship was the publication of translations of foreign works as original works of Ukrainian literature. For instance, Borys Hrinchenko had to turn Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Prisoner in the Caucasus into the story The Black Sea Men in Captivity. One more way to circumvent the ban on printing translations into Ukrainian was to publish the books abroad and then smuggle them into the Russian Empire.
All these ways to bypass censorship barriers mean that we should take into account the non-systemic aspects of the context and the unpredictable interference of random events, that we should not ignore the fundamental importance of interpersonal relations, i.e., net of relations, acquaintances, schoolmates, neighbors, etc. in which people made favors in exchange for other favors bypassing generally accepted rules and laws in the intercourse with, e.g., censorial agencies, as Daniele Monticelli (2020) has demonstrated recently when he described such useful connections: the person responsible for reading the Estonian translated literature book series proofs at Glavlit (the Soviet censorship agency) was one of the Editor-in-Chief’s university groupmates and that allowed to lessen the obstacles of Soviet censorship.
Translation can play an important role in the nation-building for subjugated peoples by establishing boundaries between cultures. Whereas in the early 1920s, the common view was that translations of Russian belles-lettres into Ukrainian were pointless waste of means and effort, as an average Ukrainian reader could read any work of Russian literature in the original, the late 1920s witnessed abundant Ukrainian translations of Russian prose, which pointed to the separateness of the Ukrainian language and culture (see Kalnychenko and Kolomiyets 2022). Recently, Lada Kolomiets and I have been researching Russian-Ukrainian literary translation over the past hundred years (before 1917 there was practically no fiction translated from Russian into Ukrainian). This study (Kolomiyets and Kalnychenko 2024) proves that Russian-Ukrainian translation has both bright and dark sides. On the one hand, these are translations of Russian poetry by neoclassicists in mid-1920s, philologically accurate translations of the collected works of Gogol and Chekhov, and other achievements of the Ukrainian translation school, which was born in the late 1920s and early 1930s and was theoretically justified accordingly; on the other hand, through the Russian language and translations from Russian, the Soviet cultural space was established, which was deliberately isolated from the world cultural space and was supposed to replace it, contributing to the Russification of the Ukrainian language and the provincialization of Ukrainian literature.
When an empire disintegrates and national boundaries are redrawn, it can result in a shift where a previously dominant language becomes a minority one. The case of Russian in Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union serves as an example of this phenomenon. Moreover, after 24 February, 2024, Russian ended up being completely excluded from the public sphere in Ukraine. Overall rejection and denunciation of Russian literary products is now, for many in Ukraine, not just an aesthetic choice in a struggle for cultural identity. It is an existential necessity.
The topic of this discussion, as suggested by its title, is virality and isolation. Nevertheless, despite different vocabulary, I believe that once again we are talking about one of the key issues pertinent to translation studies at least since polysystem theory in nineteen seventies – namely about the relationships between centres and peripheries. The issue might not be new, but like many other social phenomena connected with different distribution of power, it remains topical. The problem of inclusion and exclusion (of people, ideas, paradigms) has been reframed here to reflect the changing, and (although I hate to use this buzz word, the reality it names has become ubiquitous) digitalising world. It is clear tough that the central idea – unequal distribution of power – remains the same, although mechanisms change. With new information and knowledge – often, unfortunately, also pseudoknowledge – reaching global audiences literally instantly, it may get very hard to navigate the world and follow all relevant new developments. I believe that in this situation, rationalism can prove useful even today and indeed may be crucial now more than ever if we are to be able to critically evaluate rights and wrongs.
One of the key issues here, as suggested in the introductory remarks, certainly is striving for the empowerment of marginalised groups as the effort is to give voice to voiceless (authors, cultures, texts, organisations) has long been one of the main goals of translation and translation studies. However, I would like to speak about marginalised ideas. Ideas travel, they are not national, but can be prevented from spreading or be marginalised by nationalism/imperialism and get rediscovered again once circumstances change – e.g. when ideological restrictions are removed. One current example of this is the rediscovering of (older and current) research of translation and interpreting that originated in Ukraine and its dissemination in English (cf., e.g., publications by Oleksandr Kalnychenko (2023), Lada Kolomiyets (2023), Taras Shmiher (2014), or Iryna Odrekhivska (2021)). This shift as I see it is not about ideas (not) having existed, but about having or not having reached their audiences. Once ideas find perceptive audience, they may even go viral and create a new centre which may lead to a revision of canonical ideas and rewriting of translation history. In the case of translation and interpreting in Ukraine and other post-totalitarian countries, this would mean freeing the history of narratives imposed on the commanded territories by the Soviet hegemony, which colonised memes of translation on this side of the Iron curtain. I remember a conference in Kharkiv in 2019, where to my amazement scholars were talking about things I never heard before. Although most of the presentations were in Ukrainian, I was able to grasp their main message. From some presentations on translation history, it was quite clear that through reconstructing historical patterns in translation practice and agenda during the Soviet Union, one could expect the 2022 invasion to happen. After the invasion, the international TS community has finally become more perceptive to what they have to say. And here I wonder, does it really take a war for marginalised groups to be listened to? I also wonder how many interesting ideas there are for us to learn from in other countries that, at the moment, we are ignorant of listening to. All knowledge is fragmented, therefore one needs to be very careful when formulating “generally valid” statements. However, I would like to make myself very clear: ideas/narratives/stories belong to all, they are not national and they need to travel and, as Vanessa Andreotti would say, dance with people in different contexts.
We are talking here also about drastic and hardly “followable/predictable” changes. I believe that translation studies, particularly the examination of translation history, has the potential to forecast future developments. Translation serves as a litmus test for societal changes and advancements. It requires constant reinterpretation of facts based on new information as Popper and Bayes invite us to do. The real fun of our research lies therein. Research is not static. It is extremely dynamic. As Taras Shmiher mentioned in his recent lecture in Banská Bystrica (2023) , history deals with interpretation of facts. However, identity bias will always influence the process, which will, despite the effort, never be objective. And yet, I advocate for data-driven interpretation. In other words, we need to draw a strict line between activism/wishful thinking and empiricism. In my opinion, activism should always be based on empirical data. I've had this ongoing discussion with Christopher Rundle on what to do once we know or we think we know. He, as a brilliant translations historian (not a historian of translation studies) focusing on fascism and para-fascism, has a lot of knowledge about mechanisms which drive and fuel the system. Indeed, quite clear patterns are visible. So, what do we do when we see the same (or very similar) pattern recurring today? To know doesn’t mean to stay impartial and quiet. Knowledge is responsibility, and translation carries a lot of knowledge since one of its main goals is to spread it (to whichever purpose this knowledge may serve).
Breaking out of isolation for translation studies as a discipline also means to abandon our comfort zones and internalise power asymmetries which, as I mentioned before, are very dynamic categories.
In other words, the Chesterman’s crucial question (e.g. 2011) remains stilt very relevant: So what? What is the ultimate goal of our efforts? Historical justice? I recall one conversation with a colleague some years ago, when I said I was sick of looking for who was “the first”. He said that I may be right, but it is about looking for historical justice. I understand it as doing justice and recognising previously silenced. However, it's crucial to remember that achieving historical justice doesn't entail rewriting history according to our preferences. That would again mean we give our wishful thinking a superior role, and that must not happen. People frequently perceive what aligns with their desires, and scholars are not exempt from this tendency (e.g., confirmation bias and availability heuristics). Thus, we create these echo chambers where we feel comfortable. Deconstructing these chambers is what breaking out of isolation really means to me. Thus, I strongly advocate against all forms of anti-intellectualism in service of any ideology.
And the issues we are talking about here are only a fragment of translation market. Significant? Major? I doubt. Interesting? Definitely. But let us not forget about everyday translators and interpreters and their work which, I dare say, forms the majority of translation market and habitus and subtly shapes societies at large. Indeed, the social transformative power of translation is remarkable. For example, before 1989, literary translation formed the core of translation market in Slovakia. Universities also focused mainly on teaching literary translation as that was seen as the high art of translation. Certainly, it's important to note that since Slovakia, or rather Czechoslovakia, belonged to the Soviet sphere of influence, publications primarily focused on “friendly” languages and cultures – i.e. politically aligned ones. After 1989, the situation changed dramatically. Not only did the translated languages change (shifting from Russian to English), but also the nature of translation and social demand underwent dramatic changes. A shift towards “pragmatic translation” could be observed, and literary translation began to lag behind, mainly from an economic perspective. Nowadays, as Klaudia Bednárová-Gibová and Mária Majherová (2021) aptly note, literary translation has become a semi-profession. This has also been confirmed by research I conducted with Pavol Šveda (2023), showing that only 1% of translators in our sample (n=350) make their living solely from translating literary texts. However, up to 26% of translators and interpreters in our sample say they sometimes translate books for publishing houses. Oddly enough, based on the research, it seems that most literary translators are content with their social status and satisfied with their work. This means that we find ourselves in a rather paradoxical situation where an abundance of symbolic and cultural capital does not necessarily lead to higher economic capital. In Slovakia, this is also the case for other workers in the cultural sector. Thus, literary translation seems to be more about cultural activism than anything else. Up to 90% of translators mainly depend on technical translation. That being said, it appears that in the future, and even today, a professional translator/interpreter will be the individual who can effectively combine various translatorial activities (such as literary texts, audiovisual translation, technical translation, post-editing, interpreting, etc.) as effectively as possible.
I would say, in general, that there is a call for the emancipation of the translation profession, which subsequently needs to integrate into the wider ecosystem of humanities. I think that we all need to calm down a little bit, take a deep breath, rethink our priorities, and then act accordingly. Slavoj Žižek (2009) warns that we are facing pseudo-activity, the urge to ‘be active’, to ‘participate’, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. He adds that people intervene all the time, ‘doing something’; academics participate in meaningless ‘debates,’ etc.; but the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from it all. Thus sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do. Therefore, I call for evidence based/data-driven/and possibly rational activism.