Rose France

Lecturer

Russian Section
Department of European Languages and Cultures
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Tel: +44 (0)131 650 8932
Email: Rose.France@ed.ac.uk

Street: Room 2.12
50 George Square
City: Edinburgh
Post code: EH8 9LH

Office Hours
Thursday 13.10 -14.10

Biography

Background

Rose has spent many years practicing and teaching Russian-English translation. She teaches Russian language, translation and culture on a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. She is an experienced literary translator, and has published a number or reviews and review articles on translation, Russian literature and comparative literature. She has worked alongside some of the leading translators in Russian-English literature, including Boris Dralyuk, Robert Chandler, Andrew Bromfield. She has also acted as an interpreter at a number of events featuring prominent Russian cultural figures, including Vasilii Sigarev, Vitalii Manskii and Leonid Yuzefovich.

After graduating with a degree in Russian Studies from the University of Edinburgh, Rose worked for a year at the university as a Research Assistant before completing a PhD in Translation studies, Literary history and Translation Practice at the University of Glasgow. Before joining the University of Edinburgh in an official capacity in 2015, she taught informally both at the University of Edinburgh and at the University of Stirling (where she taught on the postgraduate level MEFL in Translation Studies between 2013-2016). In addition, she worked for many years as a freelance Russian translator and a public service and court interpreter.

Rose has led practical translation workshops at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and at the Scottish Poetry Library, and was part of the 2017 Sonnets Exchange Programme organised by the Scottish Poetry Library and funded by the British Council which brought together Russian and Scottish poets in 2017. She has published a number of reviews, review articles on translation and critical articles on Russian literature and comparative literature, and participated and presented papers at conferences and has contributed to a number of conference proceedings.

Rose's main responsibilities are teaching the core Russian studies programme, as course organiser and tutor on courses in first, second and fourth year, as well as the option course Culture and Power under Stalin.

Teaching & PhD supervision

Undergraduate teaching

Teaching

"Culture and Power Under Stalin - 1924-1953" (option course)
Russian Studies 4 Honours Language Paper 2
Russian Language 2A and Russian Language 2B Translation
Russian Studies 1A and 1B "Introduction to Russian Culture" component
Russian 1B Grammar

Course Organiser:

Culture and Power under Stalin (1924-1953)
Russian Studies 4 (Honours) Language Paper 2
Russian Language 2B
Russian Studies 1B
Russian Studies 1A and 1B - Culture component

Postgraduate teaching

MSc in Translation Studies - Portfolio of Written Translation Exercises

MSC in Comparative Literature - dissertation supervision

(2013-16)

Literary Translations and other Publications

Literary Translations

"Boys in Zinc" play by Marius Ivaškevicius based on the book by Svetlana Alexievich (2020)
Short Stories by Nadezhda Teffi ("Thou Shalt not Covet", Hedda Gabbler"; and A Conversation") in "Shadows of Days: Russian Emigre Short Stories from Bunin to Yankovsky" ed. by Bryan Karetnyk, London: Penguin Books, 2017
Satirical Sketches by Nadezhda Teffi ( "A Few Words About Lenin" and "The Guillotine") and Mikhail Zoshchenko ("A Wonderful Audacity") in "1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution", ed. by Boris Dralyuk, London: Pushkin Press, 2017
Stories and Memoirs by Nadezhda Teffi in "Rasputin and Other Ironies", ed. by Robert Chandler and Anne-Marie Jackson Pushkin Press, 2016. (Also published as "Tolstoy, Rasputin, Others and Me", New York Review of Books, 2016)
Joint translation of book: Childrens WWII diaries "Children of War: Diaries 1941-1945". A i F "Dobroe serdtse" Foundation, 2016 (with Andrew Bromfield and Anthony Hippisley)
Poems by Mikhail Lermontov ("The Demon", "Russian Song", "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" and "It's Dull and its Sad" (with Peter France) in "After Lermontov: Translations for the Bicentenary", ed. by Peter France and Robyn Marsak, Carcanet, 2014

Book Reviews

"Chevengur" by Andrei Platonov, translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. Review published in "Translation and Literature" Autumn Vol 33 No. 3 (2024)
"George Orwell and Russia" by Masha Karp. Review published in "Translation and Literature" Spring Vol. 33 No. 1 (2024)
"War of the Beasts and the Animals", by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale and "Maria Stepanova: The Voice Over", edited by Irina Shevelenko, translated by several hands. Review published in 'Translation and Literature' Vol 31, No.1 (2022)
"Fourteen Little Red Huts and Other Plays" by Andrei Platonov, translated by Robert Chandler, Jesse Irwin, and Susan Larsen and "Strolls with Pushkin" by Andrei Siniavsky, translated by Slava I. Yastremski and Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy. Review published in "Translation and Literature" 27 (2018)
"Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry", selected and translated by Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Brian Boyd and Stanislav Shvabrin. Review published in "The Goalkeeper: The Nabokov Almanac". 2010

Publications, Research Papers and Conference Presentations

(Forthcoming) "The Chekhovian Love Plot in NEP-era Culture: Critical Responses and Literary Echoes", in Love and Identity in Anton Chekhov, ed. Joe Andrew, Olga Honcharova and Robert Reid, for publication by Brill.
“Marriage Freedom and the Self: Tolstoy’s “Family Happiness” and Chekhov’s “Three Years”, in Tolstoi and the Evolution of his Artistic World, ed. Joe Andrew and Robert Reid, Studies in Slavic LIterature and Poetics No.64, Leiden: Brill, 2021.
Review Article: "Soul Journeys: Tsvetaeva's Poetry in Translation". Review of Marina Tsvetaeva: Milestones and After Russia: The First Notebook, translated by Christopher Whyte, in Translation and Literature" 28 (1) 2019.
"The Shadow Double and the Law: Stevenson, Nabokov and Dostoevsky", paper presented at Truths and Fictions: Two Centuries of Scottish-Russian Encounters ( University of Dundee, June 2016) published in "Studies in Scottish Literature" Spring 2018 (44:1)
“Zoshchenko’s Positive Heroine: an Interpretation of the Lyolya and Min’ka Stories”. Unpublished research paper presented at the Conference of the Neo-Formalist Circle, (Mansfield College, Oxford, 2012)
“In Quest of the Proto-text” in Neo-Formalist Papers: Contributions to the Silver Jubilee Conference to mark 25 Years of the Neo-Formalist Circle. Amsterdam: Rodopi 1995. pp. 14-27.
“The Speaking Author: Skaz in Mikhail Zoshchenko”, in Essays in Poetics, Vol. 21 (Autumn 1996), pp.35-49.