The Translator's Toolkit: Marian Schwartz's Total Russian Resource

Posted on February 25, 2010 by

(Before we get into Marian Schwartz's offering in our Tookit series, a note: The Center will be co-sponsoring a translation workshop with Marian Schwartz on Saturday, March 20. Geared toward new translators, it will cover practical topics such as choosing projects, rights and permissions, and the publishing business. Attendees will also have a chance to undertake a hands-on translation of a passage of fiction. Spacing is limited and registration is required, so if you're interested make sure you register here.)
Like any proud literary tradition, Russia's is constantly referring to itself. Probably not more so than any other, but sometimes that's how it seems when you're the translator trying to track down a quotation. In the bad old days, before those crazy electrons started flying through the air and into our work spaces, we relied on native informants steeped in their own literature to identify an allusion. Not a bad solution. Tried and true really. But it does require human interaction and is never instantaneous (unless you happen to be that native informant's significant other, an option that eluded me forty years ago).
A few years ago I attended ATA's national conference?not a regular stop on my annual rounds?specifically to hear and meet Michele Berdy, an American expat who has lived in Moscow for decades and who writes a fine column for The Moscow Times explicating Russian vocabulary, idioms, and usage for English speakers. She was giving a workshop and delivering the Slavic Division's keynote speech. Both performances were stellar, yielding multiple insights and new information but also a fabulous tidbit (assuming tidbits can be fabulous). Berdy told of a CD that collected vast quantities of Russian literature from the eleventh to the early twentieth century. Virtually everything by virtually every writer you ever have and haven't heard of. And it was searchable.
Fast forward a year to Moscow. Locating and purchasing this CD was high on my to-do list while I was there. Friends sent me to Gorbushka, Moscow's gigantic marketplace for household goods, music, and electronics. In the Metro, I eavesdropped on the various conversations around me until I found a youthful threesome clearly headed for the land of CDs. We all got off at the Bagriotonskaya station and I followed them, as the cops say on TV.
The Gorbushka I entered is a far cry from the black market that sprung up near there in the 1980s, before CDs were widely available in Russia, on a square by the Gorbunov House of Culture. The illegal trade had been brisk. Eventually the government threatened to shut it down altogether, but instead, in the face of furious popular opposition, including spontaneous protest rallies, they repurposed the nearby Rubin factory as the new civilized and nonpiratical Gorbushka. I think they were exaggerating about at least one of those adjectives.

title=gorbushka

The Gorbushka I saw was quite clean and unscary, but there were obviously unlicensed CDs everywhere. Heck, some of these guys weren't even trying for a reasonable facsimile, and they had nothing against charging the MSRP for what looked to me like pretty sketchy goods.
Eventually I came to an out-of-the-way corner at the back of the second floor (doesn't this sound Russian already?) where I found a high-quality vendor with an encouraging assortment of CDs?and they all looked legal, i.e., quality-controlled. After all, what good would a cheap but botched CD do me once I got back to Austin?
Indeed, there it was: Русская литература от Нестора до Маяковского (Russian Literature from Nestor to Mayakovsky).*
The CD holds the equivalent of 100,000 book pages, more than 3 million words, or about 200 500-page books. 120 Russian writers and poets! The compilation uses the authoritative original texts and provides both publication data and bibliographical information on the author. Hyperlinks take me to author's notes. There's even a brief bio and portrait for each author. This is not just a tool for identifying identify literary quotations. I can also search for names, concepts, and themes in various combinations. I can even . . . read.
My own discovery was that with this tool I could trace the usage of specific words and expressions over Russian literature's entire public-domain history. I could discover how a word's meaning and use had or hadn't changed. When I find a word's lineage I learn something about a writer's artistic influences and his or her influence's influences. It's a completely new way to explore writing.
I have shelves and shelves of books in the original Russian, but more often than not I don't have what I need at a given moment. I'm often missing a particular Chekhov story or Mayakovsky poem, let alone that very special Rozanov essay.
Now I have everything.
*Last I checked, the CD was still available from DirectMedia for 350 rubles, about $12, at www.directmedia.ru.