WHAT’S IN A PATRONYM or BETTER TRANSLATE THAN NEVER

When Strawdog started work on Three Sisters back in 2006 I had never seen or read a Chekhov play. There are other similarly glaring gaps in my theatre education. I think I may be the only actor I know that has never read nor seen Death of a Salesman. I hear it’s pretty good though.

One of the things I’d heard about Curt Columbus’s translations was how successful he was at turning the turn-of-the-century Russian dialogue into something palatable to a contemporary English-speaking audience.

Columbus accomplishes this in a number of ways:

Replacing figures of speech with more contemporary or familiar expressions. One example of this in Cherry Orchard: the character Yepihodov’s nickname goes from “two-and-twenty troubles” to “Here comes trouble” in Columbus’s translation.

Columbus also uses (as some reviewers have pointed out) the “active voice” very consistently. A couple examples of this can be found in Astrov’s speech at the beginning of Uncle Vanya. “A switchman was carried in from the railroad” versus Columbus’s “they bring me this railway switchman” and “then my feelings that should have been deadened awoke again” versus Columbus’s “Then, just when I don’t need them, my feelings come rushing back.” These seems like minor alterations but they makes it far easier for an actor to play the character as a person who is actually engaged in their world and not simply a passive citizen of it.

The other notable change Columbus brings to Chekhov is shortening the names of the characters by dropping the use of patronymics.

Wikipedia (which is on the Internet, which you can get on computers now) tells us that “A patronym, or patronymic, is a component of a personal name based on the name of one’s father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor.” Most of us in the western world are familiar with patronymics through surnames that end with “son” like Robertson (“son of Robert”), Wilson (“son of William”) and et cetera.

In Russia the use of patronymics is much more vital and dynamic. The patronymic is an official part of a person’s name appearing on official documents and is usually included in the person’s name when referring to them. It comes after the first name and it is “conjugated” differently based on whether a person is male or female. A good example of this is in Tolstoy’s War and Peace where a character is named Nikolai Ilyich Rostov and his sister is Vera Ilyichna Rostova. “Ilyich” meaning son of Ilya” and “Ilyichna” meaning “daughter of Ilya.” In “Uncle Vanya,” the character of Vanya’s full name is Ivan Petrovitch Voinitsky which means, literally, Ivan Son-of-Peter Voinitsky. The polite way of addressing a Russian includes the patronymic so we would say “Ivan Petrovich! Would you like to play some Wii bowling?”

The significance of these extended names can be lost on western audiences and, if anything, they may tend to confuse the ear and draw attention away from what is actually being said by the characters. So, Columbus finds the best way to shorten the name yet still give a sense of how the character is addressed. In Cherry Orchard for example “Leonid Andreyevitch” becomes “Mr. Leon” and “Lubov Andreyevna” becomes “Lovey.” This last choice is made because the character is referred to throughout the play by the diminutive “Luba” which means “Dear.”

Columbus hasn’t discarded ALL references to patronymics. Sometimes there’s a bit of fun to be had in dealing with them. In Three Sisters the character of Masha complains about a local town councilman but she doesn’t quite remember his full name. A traditional translation of Masha’s line might be “I don’t like that Protopopov, that Mikhail Potapitch or Ivanitch.” In Columbus’s translation it becomes “I don’t like that Protopopov, that Mikhail Something-ovitch.” Likewise knowing when to keep the patronymic can highlight something particular about a character. In Uncle Vanya the character of Telegin, or “Waffles” as he’s known, is very concerned with propriety. He corrects another character when they address him incorrectly. When breaking into an argument between Vanya and the Professor he begins a long-winded story about his sister-in-law’s brother which is made even more long-winded by his insistence on using patronymics: “My brother Grigory Ilych’s wife’s brother, you may actually know him, Konstantine Trofimovich Lakedemov, he was a magistrate, and…” In both this example and the one from Three Sisters the reference to the patronymic becomes a bit of a wink to the English speaking audience.

And Chekhov is about nothing if not getting a bit of humor where you can find it.

Tom Hickey

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