Culture and Communication. Yuri Lotman

      All things considered, how then should one translate zhenshchina? Given that in Russian this generic use of the singular sounds entirely neutral, should one gloss over its essentializing implications by adopting the current English-language norm of using the plural instead? Or, on the contrary, should one draw specific attention to the way Lotman’s language embeds gendered assumptions, for example by using the archaizing “woman” without article, making him even more essentializing than he was (or at least sounded in Russian), at the risk of putting off the English-speaking readers we address with this translation? Or would the compromise position “a woman” both convey the gendered language, while also implying the neutrality of its expression in Russian? Ultimately such decisions can only be adjudicated on the basis of an agreed understanding of the role of the translator, which can range from that of an invisible, or inaudible (if duly credited) conveyor of the thoughts expressed in the original into a fluid idiom of the target language, through that of a transcriber and performer attentive to the inflections and cadences of the original and willing to “foreignize” the target language accordingly, to that, ultimately, of an interventionist broker who conveys through translation an interpretation that both historicizes and actualizes the original in varying measures. Priorities will change depending on whether one aims for semantic equivalence, faithfulness to the distinctive form and style of the original, equivalence of effect or impact, or creative and critical reinsertion into a new discursive context. Do we agree with Walter Benjamin that the responsibility of the translator is to retain as much difference as possible, even at the risk of stretching the norms of the target language?³⁴ Given that with Lotman we deal with expository rather than artistic prose, and given the instrumental aims of this translation of making his ideas more widely accessible, it seemed appropriate to err on the side of intelligibility and fluidity, while also recognizing that Lotman’s “otherness,” his distinctive syntax and metaphors, are intrinsic to the meanings he constructs and therefore also worth smuggling through the checkpoints of linguistic boundaries, striking some uneasy balance between domestication and foreignization.³⁵ In the end, we settled for “a woman” as a reasonable compromise that does not disguise the gendered tone of Lotman’s prose, but avoids blatant reification and essentializing. The same principles also determined how we conveyed pronouns, inducing us to avoid modernizing turns such as “s/he.” Thus, in Lotman’s model of communication, the addressee in the I—HE channel remains a HE, and does not become a S/HE. The capital letters here clearly indicate that we deal with an abstract model, not with a representational icon. Avoiding the s/he binary also has the advantage of eschewing the imposition of a binary at a time when fixed gendered binaries have themselves become problematic. We trust the readers will understand that for Lotman, as much as for us, the translator and editor of this volume, the use of the male pronoun is a manifestation and recognition (on our part) of a historical convention that has now thankfully been superseded.

      To facilitate comprehension, especially among readers not specialized in Russian history and culture, it seemed essential to elucidate some of Lotman’s rich cultural references. At the same time, doing so in an exhaustive fashion would have laden this edition with an overly ponderous apparatus. I aimed to cut a middle way, appending a commentary where some additional information was required for full comprehension, while leaving alone many references that could easily be illuminated through a couple of internet clicks. There are many personalities making brief appearances in Lotman’s prose, and I have dwelt on them only where a conceptual understanding of their roles in the text contributed to its understanding. Each piece is introduced by a brief paragraph in italics, in which I took the liberty to highlight some of Lotman’s core ideas, or place them in a larger critical context, which I did partly to account for my selection of works, and partly to aid understanding and gesture at the internal coherence of Lotman’s thinking. Indeed, while the division between the structuralist and the post-structuralist periods in Lotman’s intellectual career is a well-established proposition (and one to which I have contributed myself in my previous works on him), what emerged here, to my surprise, is the consonance and interconnectedness of his oeuvre, despite superficial shifts of emphasis, even across the two broad spheres of semiotics and cultural history. As we worked on the translation, we also noticed a few mistakes. The trivial ones were corrected silently, while we left a trace of our corrections where the matter seemed more consequential or served to illustrate Lotman’s method.