For many years now, a Laboratory of Literary Translation has been functioning at the Department of the Russian Language and Literature of the Institute of Media, Social Sciences and Humanities (IMSSH). This laboratory is headed by Candidate of Sciences (Philology), Associate Professor Denis Pelikhov, whose students have been frequently winning prizes in translation contests.
The translations of poems by a famous Polish author Adam Mickiewicz, performed by a fourth-year student Valeriia Kobylina, have recently been published in the Swiss journal SlavicumPress of the Institute of Slavonic Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, with which the IMSSH Department of the Russian Language and Literature has long-standing partnership relations.
Among the reviewers of the Polish-to-Russian and Russian-to-Polish translations were Doctor of Sciences (Philology), Research Fellow of the Institute of Slavonic Studies at the University of Zurich, editor of the SlavicumPress journal Olga Burenina-Petrova, as well as a well-known Polish literature scholar, Professor Roman Bobryk from the Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies of Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities.
We have asked Denis Pelikhov about the work of his student:
– Could you please tell us how did Valeriia Kobylina work on her task? Were there any difficulties in the process?
– Initially, Valeriia translated these poems to participate in the Literary Creativity contest held by Moscow Pedagogical State University as part of the 20th International Conference for Young Philology Scientists "The Science of Philology in the 21st Century. Viewpoint of the Young", dedicated to the 140th Birthday Anniversary of Alexander Blok. She became the winner of the 2nd prize in that contest.
While working on her task, Valeriia had faced certain difficulties. The thing is that the language of Mickiewicz, in terms of the lexis, differs from the modern Polish language significantly, that is why it had been somewhat hard to translate the headings of the aphorisms. In addition, poems by Adam Mickiewicz are written in syllabic verse, classical for the Polish poetry; while the audience, who have grown up reading the Russian poetry of the 19th century, as a rule do not see these poems as classic ones, therefore, the transformation into an accentual-syllabic form is required.
The SlavicumPress journal has also published the translations by other students of the Department of the Russian Language and Literature: Polina Demchenko (СГ-109) and Polina Pavlova (СГ-209), who performed translations of poems from the Slovak, Slovenian, Byelorussian, and Polish languages; as well as the Dmitrii Pelikhov's translation into Polish of a poem Sad (Garden), written by a student of group СГ-409 Alina Diiarova. The poem posted on the website of the Swiss journal has been illustrated by an art work also by Alina Diiarova painted in acrylics on canvas.
In the nearest future, literary translations by Danil Klopotiuk (СГ-209), and Alina Diiarova (СГ-409) will also be published.