Translator profession: Ukrainian school

“JIT.Academy” continues the story about the origin and development of translation. Today, our focus is on Ukrainian translators.

The school of Ukrainian translation arose in the Middle Ages. It was started by Cyril and Methodius, educators and creators of the Slavic alphabet, translating the Holy Scriptures into Old Slavonic in the 9th century.

Works from ancient Greek were translated into this intermediary language in Eastern Europe: just as in Western Europe, ancient Greek was translated into Latin (https://www.jit.academy/profesiya-perekladach-chastyna-per).

Until the 15th century, artistic and scientific texts were translated into Old Slavonic, in particular, the most famous works of Europe at that time: “Alexander Romance,” “The Story of Barlaam and Joasaphat,” and “The Tale of the Indian Kingdom.”

In the 15th-18th centuries, the poems of Ovid, Horace, Tales of Tristan and Isolde, Unaddressed Letters by Francesco Petrarch, and some of the Decameron novels were translated. The most famous translators were Ivan Maksymovych, Feofan Prokopovych, Hryhoriy Skovoroda, and Kliryk Ostrozkyi. 

Biblical texts were translated closer to the original, and much looser interpretation was allowed for translating texts of other genres. An example of such an adaptation is the translation of Virgil’s “Aeneid” by Ivan Kotliarevskyi (1798). 

In the Ukrainian romanticism era (18th-19th centuries), poets started abandoning burlesque mockery of works; translations became more accurate. They translated Goethe, Alexander Pushkin, Adam Mickiewicz, George Byron, and Shota Rustaveli.

Later, two trends of translators formed: “classic” and “folklore.” The “classical” movement originates from Mykhailo Starytskyi and Ivan Franko. Its participants follow established literary rules and convey the style of original works through language norms. 

Panteleimon Kulish and Ivan Kostetskyi formed the “folklore” trend. “Folklorists” are not afraid to experiment and use oral creativity and baroque traditions in their works. Their translations are full of symbols, metaphors, and antitheses. 

Lesia Ukrainka, Volodymyr Samiylenko, Mykola Zerov, Maksym Rylskyi, and Vasyl Stus also developed the modern school of Ukrainian translation.

In the 21st century, the translator profession is popularized, particularly by Yuriy Andrukhovych, who translated William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, and Viktor Morozov, who translated a series of novels about Harry Potter and the works of Paulo Coelho.

We will tell you about the most interesting translators of our country in the following articles.