Authors

Discussion

In recent years, the history of Soviet machine translation (MT) practice and theory has been well researched (Gordin 2015, 2020; Gerovitch 2002; Hutchins 2013, 2020). However, the findings, including regarding Isaak Revzin and Viktor Rozentsveig’s 1963 contribution to MT theory, have not yet been incorporated within the history of Soviet translation thinking more broadly. Similarly, although scholars have increasingly studied Andrei Fedorov’s translation theory (Vasserman 2021; Baer 2020, 2021; Shakhova 2021), parallels between Fedorov’s work and Revzin and Rozentsveig’s have hitherto not been drawn.

In contrast to Anthony Pym’s top-down perspective (2016), which explicitly sought parallels with Western translation studies, I have undertaken bottom-up research using primary sources by Soviet translation scholars. I will focus on the two ‘general theories’ of translation proposed during the decade after Stalin’s death: by Fedorov (1953, 1958) and Revzin and Rozentsveig (1963). Fedorov consolidated and combined earlier theorists’ work on text typology and the systematisation of translation strategies, allowing him to propose a general theory of translation which claimed a ‘linguistic’ approach. Fedorov’s work was co-opted by Revzin and Rozentsveig as a foundation for their general theory of human and machine translation, which brought computational linguistics into the field of translation. In different ways, these thinkers developed Russian Formalist thinking from the 1920s.

Translation study in the USSR was more developed and multi-faceted than has yet been accounted for within translation studies internationally. The history of Soviet translation theories relates to political and geopolitical trends: the Khrushchev-era ‘Thaw’ and the rise of cybernetics during the Cold War.