THE FIRST TIME I read Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse’s translation, from the Russian, of Chukchi author Yuri Rytkheu’s When the Whales Leave, it was like falling into a trance. Its language induces a type of hypnosis that compels the reader to read straight through to the end. In the readings that followed, I was able to slow myself down, but the text kept driving me on with its own tempo. Rytkheu’s narrative is rooted in an oral tradition, in Chukchi storytelling, and so the very act of writing it down is a form of translation. Add to that the fact that Rytkheu writes in Russian, not in Chukchi. And yet, Yazhbin Chavasse’s English clearly preserves the oral rhythms beneath all these layers of translation. I was interested in how she managed this magical act.
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