The profession of translator: Ivan Franko 

One of the most famous Ukrainian translators is the writer and scholar Ivan Franko (1856-1916), who founded the classical school of Ukrainian translation. 

Franko began to translate while studying in the senior classes of the gymnasium and did not leave this work until the last days of his life. He knew 14 languages: Polish, German, Greek, Latin, Old Slavonic, Czech, russian, French, English, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Italian, and Yiddish.

Most of the writer’s creative work includes translations of ancient literature. Among them are all Homeric hymns, Sophocles’ tragedy “Oedipus the King,” and the works of the Roman poets Horace and Virgil.

Franko is also the author of the translation from Old East Slavic of the 12th-century heroic poem “The Tale of Ihor’s Campaign” and the medieval German epic poem “Song of the Nibelungs.”

In addition, the writer’s translation heritage includes translations: from German literature – Goethe, Heinrich Heine, from English – William Shakespeare, George Byron, Charles Dickens, from French – Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Emile Zola, from Spanish – Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, from American – Mark Twain, from Dutch – Multatuli, from Hungarian – Kalman Miksat, from Italian – Dante Alighieri, Giordano Bruno, from Czech – Karel Havlicek-Borovsky, from Polish – Adam Mickiewicz, from ancient Ukrainian literature – Ivan Vishnevsky and russian authors – Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Mykola Gogol, and Alexander Herzen.

Franko also translated Arabic tales from the collection “One Thousand and One Nights” and ancient Indian animal tales “Panchatantra” and worked on the ancient Indian epic “Mahabharata.” 

Franko also translated from Ukrainian to Polish and German, particularly the works of Taras Shevchenko, Panteleimon Kulish, and Stepan Rudanskyi.

Very often, Franko added his comments to the translations (of his own and others). He told the readers about the time in which the work was written, the features of its creation, the significance of the work for world literature, and what curiosities and obstacles he faced while translating it.

Franko initiated the methodology of translation studies analysis and substantiated “the concept of translation as a unity of literary, linguistic, lingual-stylistic, ethnolinguistic, psychological, psycholinguistic and aesthetic factors.” 

Not the least among the writer’s scientific works is the work “Something about the art of translation.” “Good translations of important and influential works of foreign literature in every cultural nation, starting with the ancient Romans, belonged to the foundations of their own writing,” Franko wrote in this work.