Soviet Turkmenia through the eyes of the Soviet writer: language and translation
The Soviet project of national literature was strongly motivated by the government in the 1930s. The government was not the only client, as regional literary circles were also interested (Turkmen in particular). The question about the language of literature was actively discussed in the Turkmen press, in particular, the new language, new literature, translation, and the work of Soviet writers on Turkmen themes. The author uses the press, critical review, and a poem by G. A. Sannikov as particular examples of this topic. The poem was published in the almanac Ajding-Gjunler which was created for the 10th anniversary of Turkmenistan as a Soviet republic by the writers' “brigade”, which had to create poems, short stories, and sketches about “new Turkmenia”. I consider the press publications controversial in the matter of the “cleanness” of new Turkmen as well as the loanwords used. The review by R. Aliev strongly criticises the translations from the classic Turkmen literature. In his opinion, the translators do not understand the sound and the nuances of the language used in national poetry. Sannikov uses Turkmen words as a means to make the reader feel the sound and the shape of them, but does not explain the meaning, which leads to the conclusion that this was an attempt to construct zaum (more or less). We conclude that the movement of Russian and Turkmen language of fiction towards each other stalled and was substituted by mass translation owing to the background of the discussion about “cleanness”, negatively reviewed translations, and the specific usage of Turkmen elements in soviet poetry. We suggest that the project of language exchange was not successful.