War, peace and Franco-Russian relations: French translations of Tolstoy’s “Sebastopol Sketches” in periodicals (1855–1885)

Year, pages: 2021, 56 - 67

French translations of Tolstoy’s Crimean war prose (published in periodicals between 1855 and 1885) were designed to reflect the dominant discourse of the era. These translations of the Sebastopol Sketches reveal a pattern of engaging with the topicality in this period, ranging from an act of soft diplomacy to the amplification of the Russophile noise of the 1880s. This article proposes a context-driven approach to reconstruct the discourse (often only implied). An analysis of macrostructural equivalence shows a pattern of (de)selecting practices similar to processes used in contemporary mass-media: adding sentences, using paraphrases or interjections to smoothen transitions, restructuring plot elements, and highlighting distinct features.

Regniers, G. 2021. War, peace and Franco-Russian relations: French translations of Tolstoy’s “Sebastopol Sketches” in periodicals (1855–1885). In World Literature Studies, vol. 13, no.3, pp. 56-67. 1337-9275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2021.13.3.6

Regniers, G. (2021). War, peace and Franco-Russian relations: French translations of Tolstoy’s “Sebastopol Sketches” in periodicals (1855–1885). World Literature Studies, 13(3), 56-67. 1337-9275. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/WLS.2021.13.3.6

Publisher: ÚSvL SAV