Beyond Bread and Salt by V.Onufriyenko in The Free Thought
7-14 December 1986
The dedication which I am writing about is worth more than a good word – it’s worth a serious article with proper analysis and a summary of the work done over several years. I am referring to the translation work or, more correctly, endeavours of Yuri Tkach.
On the table before me lies a small pile of books in English, about which I have long been meaning to write at least a small mention, because apparently no one in Australia has yet written an article about Yuri Tkach.
These books are his translations of the works of Ukrainian writers into English made over the past few years and released by various publishers. They are available for sale in Ukrainian bookshops throughout Canada and the USA, as in Australia, and they are also sold by Bayda Books, a company organized by Yuri Tkach.
The work of a translator is difficult, far more complicated than some might imagine, especially when we talk of literary translation. The translator must become “embodied” in the world of the author being translated, he must enter his skin, or more succinctly – he must transmigrate the author’s soul into himself and live in the author’s world, feel his imagination, his method of expressing himself. For this one needs a thorough understanding of the language of the original and also the target language. And it seems that in the person of Yuri Tkach we have a person who knows two worlds: his own Ukrainian world, and the other world into whose language he transforms our literature.
A collection of his translations titled “Before the Storm” recently appeared in print. This is an anthology of Ukrainian fiction from the 1920s. According to the press release, Yuri Tkach has translated 17 writers, most of whom had been arrested and their works banned. Unfortunately, I have not seen the book, but I strongly believe that like his earlier publications, it will make a valuable contribution to our translated literature.
Before venturing into a more in-depth analysis of some of these translated titles, it should be mentioned that Yuri Tkach is filling a large gap in our translation field, because even if something is translated into English in Ukraine, it is usually something which no one in the free world would be willing to read, apart from perhaps the works of some Ukrainian classics. Yuri Tkach translates works which can find a reader in the West. His translations allow those of our young people with a poor knowledge of Ukrainian, to at least become acquainted with a selection of our literature.
Yuri Tkach began his translating endeavours in 1972. In a letter to me written a year ago he said: “One rainy day I became so engrossed in Khotkevych’s “Heart of Stone” that I wanted to convey the utter beauty of the Hutsuls in English. Although I have not yet finished translating this work, I have since translated many short stories, mostly by quality Soviet Ukrainian writers.” And he mentions such names as Valeriy Shevchuk, Oles Berdnyk, Anatoliy Dimarov and Yevhen Hutsalo.
In 1975-76 under the auspices of the Melbourne University Ukrainian Students’ Club he published 4 cyclostyled magazines of translations of works by Y.Hutsalo, A.Dimarov, O.Berdnyk and O.Vyshnia. His first book appeared in 1977 under the student club’s banner, with some financial assistance from readers. In this same year he began working as an engineer. The following year, while living in Sale in Victoria, he translated the work of Igor Kaczurowsky “Because Deserters are Immortal”, a novel about the adventures of a Soviet Army deserter, who refused to fight for his “homeland”. Published in 1979, this book was highly praised in the newspapers “The Australian” and “The Age”. Leaving his job as a telecommunications engineer, Y.Tkach devoted his energy to translating and publishing. In 1980 he published Antonenko-Davydovych’s “Behind the Curtain” and in the same year translated Kasdoba’s “Son of a Kulak”.
Persistent work ensued. For the Ukrainian Canadian Writers’ Association “Slovo” he translated Mykola Ponedilok’s “Funny Tears”. In late 1980 he set about translating Ulas Samchuk’s “OST” at the behest of “Slovo” and moved to Canada to be able to consult with the author, who lived in Toronto. In Canada he translated Oles Honchar’s “The Cathedral”, in 1981 published a selection of humour by O.Vyshnia under the title “Hard Times” and D.Chub’s “New Guinea Impressions”. He also began to translate the memoirs of I.Maystrenko “The History of My Generation”. But as he said, “my funding in Canada dried up and I was forced to return home to Australia”.
In 1983 he again travelled to Canada, having received a grant from the Canadian government, and there he translated Yuri Luhovy’s “Children of the Prairies”.
Since getting translations published by English-language publishers proved to be a very problematical affair, in 1979 Yuri Tkach formed his own publishing house “Bayda Books”, printing 2,000 copies of each of his translations. Even though the editions are selling slowly, they are finding a market. Having forsaken engineering, Yuri Tkach decided to devote his life completely to translation. Some people began to “suspect” that “someone” was behind him, providing him with material support. But as he says, though it was not easy to live on meager earnings, he was able to survive somehow and more importantly, to find work. A desire to acquaint the English-speaking world with Ukraine’s culture, and not only its literature, led him to work on a series of books on Ukrainian traditions and the arts. One of the planned works on which he focused his attention was a book about Ukrainian folk weddings. He also began assembling a book on the history of Ukrainian costumes, from the Scythian period to the 17th century. Because such publications required lavish colour illustrations and substantial sums of money, he was forced to return to his original profession for a while. And to burn the candle at both ends, as they say. After working all day (to earn enough for bread and salt), in the evenings he had to fill out orders for books, prepare manuscripts for publication, collect information for fresh projects.
A complete overview of what Yuri Tkach does and what he has done would take a long time and take up a lot of space. I have mentioned only some of his translations here, only some of his publications which can be purchased from our bookshops in Australia and across the world. What Yuri Tkach does is a unique thing: who else in our community has dedicated their life to acquainting the world with our literature, having forsaken their profession and a steady income for the uncertain pay of translating work and the sale of published books?
Ukrainian newspapers and magazines in diaspora occasionally contain announcements about Yuri Tkach’s translated publications, and those people who value our culture should take notice of these announcements and purchase some of these books for their own libraries, or to give as presents to Australian friends or to people of other nationalities, remembering that a book makes the best present, much better than some useless knick-knack which can be so easily purchased.
I read the translation of Antonenko-Davydovych’s “Behind the Curtain” quite thoroughly. Like all the other translations by Yuri Tkach, it is of high quality. When you read the book, it is generally hard to tell that you are reading a translation. In some places it seems to read better than the original, for example in the final chapter.
Yuri Tkach had to overcome great hurdles in the translation of Ostap Vyshnia’s humoresques. Humour, like poetry, is an extremely difficult genre to translate, especially humour about life in Soviet times. All the same, Yuri Tkach was able to bring to the reader the atmosphere of those times, when the works of O.Vyshnia truly made people laugh in the homeland. Just as well, that the humour of the 1920s has been translated, because his postwar works are more for shedding tears over.
A collection of émigré prose written in Australia titled “On the Fence” was published last year. E.Garan made mention of the book in this newspaper. Although the title of the book might seem a little “enigmatic”, it is not quite so: the book has assembled works by authors living in Australia, who nevertheless still worry about their homeland, so that they find themselves at a crossroads of a kind, or as they say in Australia “on the fence”. I don’t think the anthology contains the best of what we have to offer – some things could have been omitted. But that’s a matter of taste and viewpoint. In any case the English-speaking reader can have some idea about our prose literature in Australia.
In finishing this unfortunately superficial overview of some of Yuri Tkach’s achievements, I wanted first and foremost to bring to everyone’s attention his selfless, persistent work – there are probably no more people like him in our midst. Because this translator still has many plans and no intention of succumbing to the burden of difficulties bearing down on him, I consider he needs the widest support of those people among us who consider themselves to be cultured. If we want to spread knowledge about our culture throughout the world, we must support those who work tenaciously and selflessly. We can support the work of Yuri Tkach by purchasing his books. They should be read in the first instance by those young people with little knowledge of their native language.