Tõlkekriitik Olev Jõgi: Ühe tõlkemeetodi rehabiliteerimine stalinismijärgsel ajal
Olev Jõgi as Translation Critic: Rehabilitation of a Translation Method in the post-Stalinist Period

Summary/Abstract: Requirements presented to the translators of literary classics by literary critic, literary scholar, translator and journalist Olev Jõgi in the early post-Stalinist period are discussed. This was when a massive lot of fiction as well as scientific, popular scientific, academic and other literature was translated from Russian into Estonian, but often the quality of translation left to be desired. The article is focused on the unpublished paper presented by Olev Jõgi at the translation section of the Estonian SSR Writers’ Union in February 1954. The paper represents a covert attempt to rehabilitate the translation method formerly used by Friedebert Tuglas, which had been suppressed since 1950 in the aftermath of the 8th plenum of the USSR Communist Party. The professional freedom and courage characteristic of Jõgi’s paper was obviously eloquent of the intention of the talented philologist to contrast and oppose a professional analytical approach to the totalitarian discourse of translation popular among the contemporary translators of Russian classics into Estonian. Olev Jõgi was a committed philologist, who dared to compare the incompetent semitranslators with some half-intellectual characters by Chekhov.

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