Natalie Duddington’s religious translations from Russian: faith in translation

This article examines translations of religious texts from Russian into English by Natalie Duddington (1886-1972), better known as an assistant to the prolific translator Constance Garnett. I consider ‘religious’ to refer to both spiritual and scriptural texts, given the overlap between religious and secular values in Russian culture. I explore Duddington’s career as a translator from the perspective of her traditionally female habitus (Simeoni, 1998) which dictates Duddington’s “invisibility” (Venuti, 2008). I argue, however, that invisibility is not necessarily imposed on a female translator by the rules of the cultural field in which she operates. Instead, I analyse Duddington’s translatorial hexis (Charlston, 2013) to show that, somewhat counter-intuitively, a translator can choose voluntarily to relinquish her own voice in the process of intercultural mediation, to further her perceived higher spiritual purposes. Duddington contributed to the British cultural field as a translator of Russian religious philosophy and literature, and as an author of her own philosophical works. Through these activities, she did not seek a more privileged position in society or to receive great personal gain. On the contrary, her main objective was to bring British and Russian people closer through shared spiritual wisdom.