Loose Canons: Translating Russian Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries, Exeter, 25 May 2016

There's a very interesting-looking event on Russian literature in translation taking place at Exeter next week - wish I could go!

Image from this page with thanks.

Loose Canons: Translating Russian Literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Reed Hall, University of Exeter
25 May 2016, 9am-5pm

This one-day workshop will interrogate the process of creating (and recreating) the canon of Russian literature in translation. 

• How do ideology and politics influence Western publishers’ choice of Russian authors for translation? 
• How does a Russian author gain canonical status in the West, and does this necessarily match his or her standing in Russia? 
• How do translators affect the process of author selection? Has the accepted canon of ‘classical’ Russian literature been significantly altered by recent translations? 
• Who are the audiences for Russian literature in translation? 

We have invited translators, critics, and publishers as well as academics from Russian and translation studies to discuss these important questions. The workshop will run from 9am to 5pm, including a  discussion paper from translator Anna Gunin, who has recently rendered Nobel Prize-winning author Svetlana Alexievich's Chernobyl Prayer for Penguin, and featuring contributions from celebrated translator Robert Chandler, academic Rebecca Gould (Bristol), publisher Alessandro Gallenzi (Alma Books), translator and scholar Roger Cockrell (Exeter), and translator and editor Oliver Ready (Oxford), among other colleagues and postgraduate students from the universities of Exeter and Bristol.

All are welcome to attend; please forward this information to colleagues or students interested in translation and/or Russian studies. For an event programme, contact Dr Muireann Maguire (muireann.maguire at exeter.ac.uk)