A Multitude of Languages - and One Country: Building up Communication among the Peoples of Russia through Translation

The article gives a survey of the problematics, historic and cultural practice of maintaining and developing the ethnic languages of Russia through translation; it retrospectively describes the history of polycultural co-existence (including the unified method of presentation for childrens folk lore in S. Marshaks version) and outlines the ways of dealing with todays urgent problems of preserving ethnic language. The article describes the models of reconstructing the lost texts and the strategies of translating the texts of small ethnic groups, as well as the models of maintaining the quality of translation from Russias ethnic languages into Russian. We especially stress the importance of the Russian language in its role of the cultural mediator. The article pays due attention to the need to develop specific practiceoriented theories of translation which would embrace the global experience in translatology and take into account the specificity of ethno-centric mentality and the ways to keep it in translation. The article is an introduction to the following materials in the volume.

The Missionary as Cultural Mediator: Alexander Don and the Chinese and European Communities in New Zealand

<p>Missionaries to China, by virtue of their positions and knowledge, frequently became important channels of information between cultures. They transmitted Christianity and Western learning to Chinese people while simultaneously describing China to home audiences through their writings and public speaking. This thesis examines how Alexander Don, Presbyterian missionary to the New Zealand Chinese in Otago from 1879 to 1913, performed similar functions as a "cultural mediator". For most of his career, Don was one of the most significant links between Chinese and European people in New Zealand. He developed a relationship with the Chinese community while simultaneously describing Chinese culture to Europeans in his published reports. While Don's missionary career has been extensively documented, there have been no studies of his significance from the perspective of cross-cultural dialogue and exchange. In this thesis I will discuss the ways that Don acted as a cultural mediator, as well as the factors that impelled him to do so. I will make an in-depth investigation of Don's presentation of Chinese culture to European readers through his mission reports, and how this image changed over the course of his career. The picture Don painted was both motivated and influenced by his mission aims, his growing understanding of Chinese culture, and his developing rapport with Chinese people. In order to demonstrate that Don was unique as a cultural mediator in New Zealand, I will compare him to other sources of information on Chinese culture. It will be shown that he provided very different data and opinions from those conveyed by secular writers and authors, and that his descriptions were generally more detailed than those of other missionaries to the New Zealand Chinese and New Zealand missionaries in China. Don will also be compared to more well-known China missionaries, in order to show that he was similar to them in terms of educating Westerners about the East. Finally, I will weigh the impact of Don's cultural mediation activities. Although he gained few converts, he played a crucial role in improving Sino-European understanding and relations. In the final analysis, Don had a greater impact in these areas than he did in the field of evangelism.</p>

The Missionary as Cultural Mediator: Alexander Don and the Chinese and European Communities in New Zealand

<p>Missionaries to China, by virtue of their positions and knowledge, frequently became important channels of information between cultures. They transmitted Christianity and Western learning to Chinese people while simultaneously describing China to home audiences through their writings and public speaking. This thesis examines how Alexander Don, Presbyterian missionary to the New Zealand Chinese in Otago from 1879 to 1913, performed similar functions as a "cultural mediator". For most of his career, Don was one of the most significant links between Chinese and European people in New Zealand. He developed a relationship with the Chinese community while simultaneously describing Chinese culture to Europeans in his published reports. While Don's missionary career has been extensively documented, there have been no studies of his significance from the perspective of cross-cultural dialogue and exchange. In this thesis I will discuss the ways that Don acted as a cultural mediator, as well as the factors that impelled him to do so. I will make an in-depth investigation of Don's presentation of Chinese culture to European readers through his mission reports, and how this image changed over the course of his career. The picture Don painted was both motivated and influenced by his mission aims, his growing understanding of Chinese culture, and his developing rapport with Chinese people. In order to demonstrate that Don was unique as a cultural mediator in New Zealand, I will compare him to other sources of information on Chinese culture. It will be shown that he provided very different data and opinions from those conveyed by secular writers and authors, and that his descriptions were generally more detailed than those of other missionaries to the New Zealand Chinese and New Zealand missionaries in China. Don will also be compared to more well-known China missionaries, in order to show that he was similar to them in terms of educating Westerners about the East. Finally, I will weigh the impact of Don's cultural mediation activities. Although he gained few converts, he played a crucial role in improving Sino-European understanding and relations. In the final analysis, Don had a greater impact in these areas than he did in the field of evangelism.</p>

Dialectic aspects between periphery and center: the translations of Aeschylus’ tragedies into French by Olivier Py

“Periphery” and “centre” are two concepts which could be examined in terms of geographic, linguistic, or cultural variations and constants at different periods of human history. If world literature is a united system, with an unequal center and periphery, the interlinguistic translation of Aeschylusʼ tragedies into French by Olivier Py in the twenty-first century will serve as an example in order to highlight the various facets of this multidimensional relationship. Olivier Py, an award-winning prose and theatre writer, poet, director, actor, translator, director of the Avignon Festival since 2013, translated and directed all seven surviving Aeschylean tragedies between 2008 and 2017. He thus played the role of a cultural mediator who ensured the transition from the source language to the target language by creating texts designed to be presented on stage, and following the priorities of the codified theatrical discourse of tragedy. Based on this process, the author exam-ines the various spatio-temporal and cultural relationships between periphery and centre in order to present the main points of Olivier Py’s translation strategy.

Marinos Papadopoulos Vretos : ‘Le trait d’union entre Paris et Athènes, l’intermédiaire naturel entre la Grèce et les Philhellènes des bords de la Seine’ (Victor Fournel, L’Espérance, 1858)

Marinos Papadopoulos Vretos (Corfu, 1828–Paris, 1871) represents a remarkable case of a conscious cultural mediator between Greece and France, during a critical time (1850–1870). Through a variety of print media (Greek, French or bilingual), he sought to inform the French-language public about the cultural identity of modern Greeks and to confute the distorted image provided by travel literature. Thanks to his excellent education in French, he managed to penetrate the French press, writing about Greek issues. He mobilised around him a network of French philhellenes, Hellenists and journalists who rebroadcasted his positions. Through his Greek-language Εθνικόν Ημερολόγιον [National Almanac], he ‘coordinated’ an important discussion on the language question, preparing the road for the foundation of the Association pour l’encouragement des études grecques.

Elisabetta Caminer Turra’s Editorial Strategies for Introducing English Novels in Italy through her Periodicals

This article investigates the figure of Elisabetta Caminer Turra (1751–96) and the role she played in the Italian reception of English novels during the eighteenth century. One key characteristic of Caminer Turra’s editorship of Giornale enciclopedico (1774–82), Nuovo giornale enciclopedico (1783–89), and Nuovo giornale enciclopedico d’Italia (1790–96) was the diffusion of foreign culture in the Italian peninsula: during her career she always aimed at the renovation and improvement of the intellectual milieu of the time. Caminer Turra’s journals played an important role in the Italian reception of foreign literature during the second half of the eighteenth century. The goal of this study is to show (a) how English novels were reviewed, censored, and introduced to the Italian public through the many articles, reviews, and announcements that appeared in the journals she supervised, and (b) to examine, from a stylistic, thematic, and political point of view, the ways in which she played her role as maker of culture and arbiter of taste, in order to clarify the importance of her function as a cultural mediator.

A Forgotten ‘Romantic’ Excursion: Joseph Blanco White's A Journey to the Trosacks in 1816

In 1816 Joseph Blanco White visited the Trossachs, having travelled to Edinburgh as a member of the household of Lord and Lady Holland. Soon afterwards he wrote A Journey to the Trosacks in 1816, a short but fascinating account of his trip which has remained unpublished until now. Lucidly penned, this autograph text shows admiration for the Scottish wilderness and interest in technological feats such as the steamboat that he takes on the Firth of Forth, an absolute novelty at the time. Observations on Highlands customs and language, and literary allusions to Sterne, Scott, Johnson and Boswell add to the interest of this forgotten piece, as do remarks about John Murray the publisher and Dugald Stewart the philosopher. The aim of this article is to present for the first time this work as a document of literary and cultural importance, given the renewed interest of Romantic era scholarship in travel writing and in Blanco White, the most important Spanish cultural mediator in Britain during the first decades of the 19th century.

LONDON, 1584: TRANSLATION AND CULTURAL POLITICS

London, in the year 1584, was a crossroads of cultural exchange, philosophical elaboration, religious dissent. The present contribution focuses on this year considering the circulation of people – especially foreign intellectuals – and books: it looks at the cultural circle established in the household of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau; at works such as Giordano Bruno’s his Cena de le ceneri and John Florio’s First Fruites; at a cultural mediator, William Fowler, and at his translation of Machiavelli’s Prince. Through the investigation of the meetings and exchanges that took place in this pivotal year the present contribution attempts to shed light on the cultural dynamics, supported by book-buying, translation, quotation and allusion, that constitute such a fundamental element of the construction of Elizabethan culture.