Nikolai Gogol’s Comedy The Government Inspector in American Translations of the First Third of the 20th Century

Abstract

The article focuses on N.V. Gogol’s comedy The Government Inspector in American translations of the first third of the 20th century to identify different renditions and semantic transformations of the play in the context of American culture. The author employs comparative, contextual, and content analysis to analyse three American translations: 1) by Max Solomon Mandell in 1908; 2) by Thomas Seltzer in 1916; 3) by George Rapall Noyes and John Lawrence Seymour in 1933.The analysis has shown that M. Mandell’s translation contains the greatest number of transformations, being adapted to the needs of the American theatre. The changes reduce the significant typical characteristics of Russian characters and emphasize their depravity. Having become more “American” in this translation, the comedy reflects American cultural and social processes: the religion-based struggle between the “genteel tradition” and realism in the literature of the early 20th century and the emerging critical attitude to the bourgeois reality. Thus, M. Mandell’s translation can be considered as preserving Gogol’s ambivalent understanding of the play, related to both the satirical origin and spiritual meaning. The changes in T. Seltzer’s translation are less significant. T. Seltzer partly explains them, revealing his socialist sympathies in the preface. T. Seltzer confirms that his translation is to demonstrate the disadvantages of the bourgeois social system, which sheds light on other transformations. However, despite his own views, T. Seltzer is aware that Gogol’s attitudes were different. These signals can be found in the translated text as well as in the preface, which makes the message of the translation less radical. The third translation is the most accurate. Having no interest in politics, D. Noyes, together with his student and colleague D. Seymour, creates a philological translation that is close to the original and allows for various renditions. This version reflects the gradual transition to the translation as an object of academic research. However, all the translations under analysis employ domesticating strategies, which reduces the significance of the source languages cultural backgrounds. The choice of strategy was determined by the ideology of American imperialism in the USA. Thus, each translation reflects, on the one hand, the socio-political and cultural situation of the USA in the first third of the 20th century, and, on the other, translators’ personalities.