Role of Paratexts in Mediating Ideologically Adapted Translations in the Soviet Union: The Case of Robert Burns

Abstract

The main aim of the current research is to demonstrate how the communist regime established in the Soviet Union after the October revolution and characterized by a centralized state control over all social discourses, including literature, functioned in practice. The paper focuses on reviews, prefaces and articles that accompanied Soviet translations of Robert Burns, one of the most famous and beloved foreign poets in the Soviet Union, their impact on readers and relevance for supporting the official ideology. Due to the variety of materials on Burns published by the Soviet press, the focus of the article is on those works that appeared in the 1930s-1950s when the official image of Burns was initially promoted. Similarity among paratextual devices used by the authorities in the 1930-50s to promote an ideologically favourable image of Burns included above all adaptations and even fabrications of the poet’s biography and ideologically favourable interpretations of Burns’s poems. The role of manipulative paratextual devices is significant, considering that the target readers’ access to the world of foreign culture was limited on the whole to literary translations.