On 24 August 2026 at 10:15, Irina Siseykina will defend her doctoral thesis “Images of Estonia(nness) in Estonian-Russian Literary Translation Flows Since 1991” for obtaining the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language and Literature.
Supervisors:
Luc van Doorslaer, University of Tartu
Sirje Kupp-Sazonov, University of Tartu
Opponent:
Philipp Hofeneder, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Summary
The Ph.D. thesis “Images of Estonia(nness) in Estonian-Russian literary translation flows since 1991” encompasses the publications from 1991 to 2023 and focuses on sociological and imagological aspects of the flow. The sociological approaches to translation flows draw on the ideas of Bourdieu, Latour, and Luhmann, and help to trace the nature and structure of the flow, the form of capital transferred through translation, the translation policies applied, and the translation network involved, as well as identify the main actors, i.e., publishers, authors, translators, and editors, and their functions. The imagological approaches required the analysis of metatexts associated with imagologically relevant titles to detect the recurring images and narratives of the flow.
The study is based on two corpora gathered from four translation databases: the Estonian Literature Center (ELIC), the Estonian National Library, Index Translationum, and the Estonian electronic bibliography. The two corpora are Estonian-Russian translations (426 titles) and Russian original titles (117 titles), which were analyzed to identify the most active publishers (KPD, Aleksandra, Avenarius, Kite, and others), translated authors (Eno Raud, Andrus Kivirähk, Leelo Tungal, Arvo Valton, Edgar Valter, and others), and translators (Vera Prohorova, Marina Tervonen, Maia Melts, and others). Selected actors were interviewed to obtain detailed information on the dynamics of the translation flow and the roles and functions of various actors, including periodicals.
The majority of Estonian-Russian translations are published in Estonia, and the majority of actors are Russian-speaking residents of Estonia, including Russian authors, who have integrated into Estonian culture and have made significant efforts to promote Estonian cultural capital among Russian readers in Estonia, Russia, and worldwide. The Estonian-Russian literary translation flow from 1991 to 2023 was the largest among translations to other languages.
A core image of the Estonian peasant, a sacred spiritual connection between Estonians and Estonian nature, the national traumas of German dominance and Soviet occupation, and the discussion of Estonia's self-identification are the tropes and narratives that are transferred through these translations.
