In Search of Lost Realities: Alan Bennett’s “The Uncommon Reader” Through Russian Reader’s Eyes

The article is dedicated to the critical reflection of the original and translated version of Alan Bennett’s “The Uncommon Reader,” whose main character is unnamed, but easily recognizable Queen Elizabeth II. Consequently, the entire different cultural context of this pseudo-biographical narrative creates certain difficulties for the translator, because she has to understand and reproduce with maximum accuracy what English speakers read without any hindrance. So, the main approach of the translation of “The Uncommon Reader” into Russian is considered to be a domesticating strategy, which means the need to adapt the story by simplifying or replacing (renaming) historical and everyday realities, when they are transplanted from one worldview to another: for example, “Alsatian — German Shepherd” or “Dame Commander — Court Lady.” It should be emphasized that the nomination problem plays an important role in Bennett’s work: while his characters dive into the depths of fiction, they seem to start to get know to themselves anew with the help of found “second names” that are foreign words of Greek (“opsimath”) and Latin (“amanuensis”) origin. The study of the author’s reading philosophy leads us to the conclusion about the uniqueness of the original title of the story, reflecting the idea of the ambivalent nature of the image of Her Royal Majesty. After a long journey from a novice reader to a writing reader, she still decided to enter the circle of the independent Republic of Letters, which blossoms with tens of names of novelists, poets, and dramatists of the present and the past on the pages of “The Uncommon Reader.” Such a literary union demanded from the translator to create a separate and well-thought commentary, which can be interpreted as a secondary attempt at “reverse translation” (A.V. Mikhailov).

Acknowledgements: The research was carried out at IWL RAS with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 23-18-00375 “Russian Literature: The Problem of Multilingualism and Reverse Translation”, https://rscf.ru/project/23-18-00375/).