Translation as Resistance: Czech and Ukrainian Historical Perspectives

The book bears witness to the quiet but resilient fi ght Ukrainian and Czech translators have waged to shape and preserve their mother tongues, save their cultural contact with the West, and energize civic engagement in times of oppression. It presents case studies on Ukrainian Bible translations and politically imbued renderings of Hamlet in Stalinist Russia and early post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia, as well as refl ections on various translation techniques as means of resistance. Such strategies include: the appropriation of foreign authors for national ends; émigré and samizdat translation; redressive translation to counteract the privileging of one national culture at the cost of marginalizing and excluding others; and editorial camoufl age of translated literature to foil censorship. The struggle of translators against ideological hegemony and aggression is no matter of the past, as we see in the chapter on the surge of volunteer translation in Ukraine since the 2022 Russian invasion.