Where did Robinson Crusoe visit, or Where did Tartary go?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Do you still read English books in Russian translation? Then, if you did not heed my previous beliefs, here is another interesting example of why you should not do this, but you should put it in the original language …

Everyone knows the novel by Daniel Defoe (by the way, he is not a Frenchman, as it might seem, but the most ordinary Englishman by the name of Danjel Defoe) "Robinson Crusoe", more precisely, "The Life and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a sailor from York, etc." … Some have even read it, probably. So, this novel has a sequel. We have translated and published. It is called "The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe". It attracted me by the fact that it was published in the original already in 1719, that is, it described the world that the writer knew, if not personally, then according to the then reference books. And you should also know that in it the writer sent his hero across the Okyan seas to China, from where he made him return home on dry land, that is, through the present-day RF. This is how, alas, the tongue-tied plot of Vykipedia's book describes:

Now that the general outline is clear to you, I would like to draw your attention to just one moment, for the sake of which I first set about comparing the translation with the original, and then the pen.

As many of you probably know, until the end of the 18th century, judging by the surviving maps, descriptions and even an article in the third volume of the Britannica encyclopedia published in 1773, the territory of the present-day Russian Federation at that time was divided into Muscovy and Tartaria, about which “Britannica writes:

So I wondered if Crusoe "noticed" this "huge country" and how the translators reflected it in the Russian version. I will not describe or tell anything, it would be better just to show in several more beautiful examples …

I open the textbook translation of 1935 (I don’t know who, it’s not indicated anywhere, but I would have known, I didn’t say it on purpose so as not to shame the person) and read:

Everything seems to be intelligible, understandable, laconic, however, too much, but maybe the author just has such a syllable? We take the author and look at exactly the same fragment:

In bold type (if visible) I marked the place that just slipped out of the translation. It is not there. What is there? And there, it turns out, this one Grand tratary, Great Tartary. Well, why, one wonders, should we, Russian-speaking readers, know about it, right?

Let's go further. We have only two more stops, since the author mentions Tartary only three times. The first, as you saw, the translators slipped through. Let's see what else they can come up with. We read:

And, nevertheless, they noticed, although not Tartary, but Tartary, which, however, appeared on the maps only on May 27, 1920, 15 years before the transfer. By the way, here is the original of this excerpt:

By the way, whom Crusoe did not meet all the way, it was the Tatars. He's got all the tartars there. Well, the British are, after all, people are as burry as the French, what can you take from them? We, too, often write Ameik, Beitania, and nothing, everyone understands everything …

However, jokes aside, because we hobbled to the most, in my opinion, remarkable place in the translation. We read:

And this place is remarkable in that, in fact, at one time only Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was able to translate in this way, throwing out pieces of an incomprehensible and unnecessary co-author, all Shakespeare, panimash … again in bold:

So we passed away safely on to Jarawena, where there was a Russian garrison, and there we rested five days. From this city we had a frightful desert, which held us twenty− three days' march. We furnished ourselves with some tents here, for the better accommodating ourselves in the night; and the leader of the caravan procured sixteen waggons of the country, for carrying our water or provisions, and these carriages were our defense every night round our little camp; so that had the Tartars appeared, unless they had been very numerous indeed, they would not have been able to hurt us. We may well be supposed to have wanted rest again after this long journey; for in this desert we neither saw house nor tree, and scarce a bush; though we saw abundance of the sable − hunters, who are all Tartars of Mogul Tartary; of which this country is a part; and they frequently attack small caravans, but we saw no numbers of them together. After we had passed this desert we came into a country pretty well inhabited - that is to say, we found towns and castles, settled by the Czar with garrisons of stationary soldiers, to protect the caravans and defend the country against the Tartars, who would otherwise make it very dangerous traveling; and his czarish majesty has given such strict orders for the well guarding the caravans, that, if there are any Tartars heard of in the country, detachments of the garrison are always sent to see the travelers safe from station to station. Thus the governor of Adinskoy, whom I had an opportunity to make a visit to, by means of the Scots merchant, who was acquainted with him, offered us a guard of fifty men, if we thought there was any danger, to the next station.

How do you like it? Still want to read the originals? If you were not too lazy and read this passage at least to the middle, you will see there "an abundance of sable hunters, which are all tartars from Mogul Tartaria, of which this country is a part."

Draw your own conclusions. If anything, ask questions.