Abstract
"Translation as Politics: Translating Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveller in Nineteenth-Century France"
This paper examines the three translations of Nikolai Karamzin’s Letters of a Russian Traveller published in nineteenth-century France. Relying on descriptive translation studies so as to challenge the traditional narrative about the political innocuousness of Karamzin’s travelogue, it reconstructs the historical contexts of the three publications in order to highlight the political agendas of their translators and/or translating patrons. Far from being the innocent product of the translators’ sheer curiosity, the three translations prove to be political objects, used at three key moments in the history of Franco-Russian relations in the nineteenth century – 1815, 1867, 1885 – in order to call for political change after the collapse of the First French Empire; restore Russia’s damaged reputation after it crushed the 1863 Polish Upheaval; or forge new diplomatic alliances after the Prussian army defeated the French in 1870.
– Rodolphe Baudin, Sorbonne Université, Paris
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