Alastar Sergedhebhít Púiscín, the Séacspír of Russia: On the Irish-Language Translations of Pushkin

This essay briefly examines the various translations into Irish of Aleksandr Pushkin’s writings, from the early twentieth century to modern renditions. One of the aims of Ireland’s Gaelic Revival (which started in the 1890s) was to produce a new literature in Irish, a language which had been reduced to that of the poor and uneducated and whose extant literature largely consisted of folk songs and poetry. The quickest way to produce such new works of poetry, plays and prose was thus to translate existing texts by international authors. As a result of this approach, Pushkin was rendered into Irish. However, these translations of Pushkin were few and far between, with the prose texts themselves occasionally being shortened, or else, in the case of his poetry, only a small selection of verses being chosen. Indeed, in one case, the same text––The Queen of Spades––resulted in three translations of various and varying quality. Despite this, a look at the Irish-language renditions of Pushkin helps illustrate some of the cultural and linguistic issues that were current, including questions of orthography, loanwords and sources of inspiration, and how Irish-language writers faced up to the task of creating a literary language where none existed.