Cold War Women: Female Translators of Russian and Soviet Literature in the Twentieth Century by Cathy McAteer (review)

The Penguin Russian Classics (Routledge, 2021), underpins her discussion here and adds historical context.The translators are grouped in pairs, presented in four chapters.The introduction explains McAteer's theoretical orientation, which "relies on an extension of the sociological turn (inspired by Pierre Bourdieu and Pascale Casanova at the end of the 1990s) to the realm of Gender Studies" (p. 1).McAteer is less interested in the literary texts that her subjects translated and the quality and impact of those translations than in the social and professional contexts of their translation careers, as a contribution to Literary Translator Studies, with its "focus on the lives and careers of professional translators and cultural mediators" (p.2).To this end she provides "microhistories" of these eight women, based on extensive archival research, including fascinating reports on some of her subjects from the British Secret Intelligence Services.Most of these women "constructed cameo-multipositional-careers where translation constituted just one profession among many in their employment profiles" (p.4).Chapter 1, "Out of the fire: Russophone migre translator-mediators in the UK," deals with Moura Budberg (1892-1974), a well-known figure thanks to her relationships with Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, and the much less well-known Vera Traill (1906-87).Both women were born in the Russian Empire and left after the Revolution.Budberg was more adept than Traill at building a life for herself based on social adaptability and networking (and possibly on espionage, although the details of her activity have never been established firmly).Before leaving Russia, Budberg developed a relationship with Gorky and was able to become an important mediator for him in the West, translating some of his works for Penguin beginning in 1940.Traill was a friend of Budberg and, like her, came under suspicion by the British Secret Intelligence Services, but McAteer concludes that Traill was much less successful than Budberg at promoting her own career, despite having translated important works such as Tolstoy's Resurrection.