Translation as a dialogue with the era: Shakespeare’s tragedies in Anna Radlova’s interpretation

The subject of the study is the translation strategy of the poetess Anna Radlova as a form of cultural dialogue with the Soviet era of the 1930s. The object of the study is the translations of W. Shakespeare’s tragedies carried out by Anna Radlova and other translators. The aim of the work is to identify the techniques which A. Radlova used in her translation decisions while transforming Shakespeare’s text for stage. To achieve this aim, the following tasks were set: to reconstruct the historical and theatrical context of the poetess’s translations, to systematise Radlova’s translation techniques, and to analyse the polemic between the “stage” and “philological” canons. The study focuses on two key aspects: the systematic “coarsening” of the original as a deliberate strategy of stage adaptation, and the criticism and debate surrounding the poetess’s translations. The research material consists of Radlova’s translations of “Othello’’ and “Macbeth’’, as well as critical articles from the 1930s (K. Chukovsky, M. Morozov, A. Smirnov). The work employs a descriptive translation analysis of tragedies, an archival and biographical analysis of the poetess’s work, and a comparative method for analysing translations of Shakespeare’s tragedies. The scientific novelty lies in the comprehensive examination of Shakespeare’s famous tragedies within a single framework of a “dialogue with the era,” as well as in the integration of translation analysis. Based on the analysis of the studied materials, a number of findings have been made that draw attention to the fact that Anna Radlova’s translation method represents a systemic strategy of acculturation, in which the “coarsening” of the original is not a “defect,” but a deliberate means of bringing Shakespeare closer to the Soviet audience. Moreover, Radlova’s translations constitute a “theatrical canon” of Russian Shakespeare, an alternative to the “literary canon.”