Against Mythistory: Oleksandr Finkel’s Theory and Practice of Translation (1929) and a Non‑Linear History of Translation Studies

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46991/TSTP/2026.SI.3.090

Keywords:

history of translation studies, institutionalization, linguo‑stylistic translation theory, Oleksandr Finkel, Ukrainian perekladoznavstvo

Abstract

This article reassesses Oleksandr Finkel’s Theory and Practice of Translation (1929) as a foundational yet marginalized contribution to Translation Studies. It challenges narratives that locate the discipline’s emergence in the 1970s by showing that Finkel developed a systematic, theoretically ambitious model decades earlier in the Ukrainian and early Soviet context. Through close textual analysis and historiographic reconstruction, the study demonstrates how Finkel integrated linguo‑stylistic analysis, genre differentiation, and cultural‑historical reflection across non‑literary prose, literary prose, and verse. The article argues that his later neglect stemmed from Soviet Russocentrism and Cold War epistemic barriers, and contends that recovering Finkel enriches contemporary Translation Studies and supports a plural, non‑linear historiography attentive to marginalized traditions.

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Author Biography

  • Oleksandr Kalnychenko, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

    Associate Professor of Mykola Lukash Translation Studies Department at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, and Researcher of the Slavic Languages Department at Matej Bel University in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. He is an official coordinator and co-editor of the Ukrainian version of John Benjamins’ Handbook of Translation Studies online and printed, the editor-in-chief of Protey and Novyi Protey translators’ miscellanies. An author of more than 150 book chapters and articles and a dozen of manuals, he has edited or co-edited the re-publication of the works of translation scholars Oleksandr Finkel, Volodymyr Derzhavyn, Mykola Lukash, and Hrihirii Maifet, compiled an Anthology of Ukrainian Translation Thinking of the 1920s-early 1930s, and translated 32 books of fiction.

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Published

2026-09-25

Issue

Re-thinking Soviet Translation Studies

Section

Part I: Re-thinking Translation History from the Periphery

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Copyright (c) 2026 Oleksandr Kalnychenko

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Kalnychenko, Oleksandr. 2026. “Against Mythistory: Oleksandr Finkel’s Theory and Practice of Translation (1929) and a Non‑Linear History of Translation Studies”. Translation Studies: Theory and Practice 3 (September): 90-105. https://doi.org/10.46991/TSTP/2026.SI.3.090.