Volkov and the Wizard of OZ -ACKNOWLEDGMENT

[ROBERT A ROTHSTEIN]

> Meanwhile, some others (like Volkov and
> Zakhoder) do not have this ethics, and are more concerned not to diminish
> their social status.  They rather prefer to be called writers than
> translators.

        Anna Rakityanskaya was gentler in her response to the above comments
by Edward Dumanis than I would have been.  I do not know very much about
Volkov (beyond what I reported in an earlier posting and what others have
added), but I do happen to know Boris Zakhoder personally.  He is well
respected both as a writer of original children's literature and as a
translator.  Both aspects of his profession and art have won him
appropriate "social status."  As a translator he often prefers the
term _pereskaz_ to _perevod_, but that is probably justified in the case
of someone who produces works that are sometimes better than the original
--my judgment of his _Vinni-pukh_.  (After reading Zakhoder's text, I
went back to Milne's, which I had either never read in childhood or had
read and forgotten, and was very disappointed.)  Zakhoder's translation/
_pereskaz_ of _Alice in Wonderland_ is perhaps not better than the
original, but is, in my judgment, certainly no worse, with Russian
wordplay corresponding to English wordplay (although not always in the
exact same place in the text), and parodies of poems known to every
Russian school child in place of Lewis Carroll's parodies of similar
English poems.
        Mr. Dumanis is certainly right to value Marshak, but Marshak
gains nothing in stature from mean-spirited criticism of other poets
and translators.

        Concerning Robert Orr's observation about _mokroe delo_:  the
term is older than the KGB.  That phrase, or _mokraia rabota_ or
_mokrota_, can be found in dictionaries of underworld slang from
the beginning of this century.

                                Bob Rothstein