Untitled

saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi:
problemebi da gamowvevebi
Issues of State Language Teaching;
Problems and Challenges
Teaching literature: adapted over original? National over translated?
The national program of the Georgian as a SL (see www.cciir.ge/upload/editor/.../qarTuli%202
,%20srandarti-1-12%20klasi.do) approves adapted literature for the Georgian Language Learners (GLL) for
the 2-9 grade students. The page 91 reads that “a 9
306
th grade student comprehends an adapted text of fiction,
which is quite logical, provided all the experience with the adapted literary texts in previous grades. However,
the trajectories of the students competency and the student requirement on the very next 92 nd page fall apart as
the student requirement claims structural and linguistic analysis of a literary text. The same paragraph: ქ.მ. IX.
8 articulates that a student is supposed to transparently demonstrate his/her skills in stylistic analysis. We have
to question here the integrity of the training and the requirement in the National Educational Program (NEP)
and to assert that no transparently demonstrated outcomes can logically be expected based on the training
component.
Clearly, the affinity between the original and the adapted literary text is the story itself, while the improvised
content is a simple with no authentic set of stylistic devices, with no auctorial story-telling, allegory,
metaphors, hyperboles, personification etc. Hence, the next requirement to GLL student to be able to compose
a fable is deemed an overstatement of the NEP which does not provide for the necessary knowledge criteria
for intermediate level training.
The analogy of the National Educational Program deliberated by the National Educational Curriculum
and Assessment Center for Georgian and non-Georgian students locates both ignoring fiction in translation.
None of the draft programs outline succinctly whether a “literary text” stands as a Georgian literary text or it
means a corpus of the translated fiction, as a part of the national corpus or as a part of the national culture. The
Annual Yearly Progress in the end of the 12 th grade enlists recommended writers, which entirely is composed
of the national writers, hence the question: as far as the NEP will measure the student competency in literatures
of various periods, does it mean that the literature also mean translated literature from worldwide or not?
And why, in case the response is negative? The translated literature is seen to be given a marginalized milieu
while it degrades its significant role as a donor of literary canons and genres: „Georgian romantic poetry is
widely considered one of the earliest manifestations of Georgia’s modern opening to the West, an indirect
consequence of her annexation by and absorption into the Russian Empire“ (Ram, Shatirishvili, 2004, p. 1). In
19 th c. translation activity in Georgia invoked multiple literary achievements. Earlier, while still in Russia,
Solomon Razmadze translated “Eugeny Onegin” and other verses by Pushkin, „ლხინი“, „დემონი“,
„განღვიძება“, „ღიშპანური სიმღერა“ /“მელოდია“. Razmadze intertwines Georgian realias into these
first unpretentious experiments, thus making a precedent of free translation. Alexander Chavchavadze translates
various verses of Pushkin, Goethe, Aesop, Cornel, Walter, Lafontaine, Hugo, Odoevsky. Dimitri Kipiani
started his career as a translator, ending in 1941 with the translation of “Romeo and Juliet”. The versatility of
the authors, texts and cultures ushered doors for Georgian romanticism. Recited by his teacher, Farys in Russian
translation was one of Baratashvili’s inspirations. Later, he was compared to Byron by the outstanding
British scholar: „…the outstanding figure is the young and tragic bard Nikoloz Baratashvili, who met his
death in 1845 at the age of 28. No one who has had the privilege of seeing the young Georgian actor
Gegechkori in the title-role of the drama Baratashvili on the Tbilisi stage is likely to forget the appeal of this
tortured, truly Byronic genius“ (Lang, 1966: 23).
Baratashvili’s “Merani” invites the best of the Russian writers to contest for the best translation of this
truly humanistic masterpiece of romanticism, Pasternak, Akhmadulina, Euteshenko, Voznyesensky,
Antokolsky, Lozinsly, and currently, Maksim Amelin’s glorious translation indicates the eternal attraction
with the poem. However, none of the translators remained unconscious of the magnetism the poem produced,
thus reflecting it in their own works, e.g. in Tsvetaeva’s untitled verse: “Пожирающий огонь — мой конь”,
Bal’mont’s “Челн томления”, Pasternak’s “Дорога”. Apparently, two phenomena emerge simultaneously:
(1) intercultural translation or interpretation of verbal signs in the same language with other signs and (2) intercultural
translation.
The 19 th c. was not only characterized with the romantic and realistic literary genres. The paradox of that
epoch concludes in the incoherence of the prosperous translation practices which enriched the genres of literature,
with the deplorable inferiority of Georgian under the colonial regime.
The Russian-educated Georgian elite who also served in Russian military services transformed into culturally
translated monolinguals, with Russian as the native language. Georgian language saw degradation un-