[Xmca-l] Re: Help with Russian translation

[HENRY SHONERD]

Andy,
Sorry, I am absolutely unqualified to translate this! But I am wondering if the “life projects” Vygotsky had in mind were akin to what Vera John-Steiner has called in her book Creative Collaboration “network of enterprises” and what you call “life projects” in your intro the recent book on collaborative projects that you edited and to which Vera has contributed. I doubt this helps with the translation, but I am hoping that I am on the right path to understanding the passage.
Henry

> On Aug 6, 2015, at 6:28 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> 
> Could some of our wonderful Russophiles criticise my translation of the following excerpt:
> 
>       *Р*еальным базисом личности человека является
>       совокупность его общественных по своей природе
>       отношений к миру, но отношений, которые реализуются,
>       а они реализуются его деятельностью, точнее,
>       совокупностью его многообразных деятельностей.
> 
>       Имеются в виду именно деятельности субъекта, которые
>       и являются исходными "единицами" психологического
>       анализа личности, а не действия, не операции, не
>       психофизиологические функции или блоки этих функций;
>       последние характеризуют деятельность, а не
>       непосредственно личность.
> 
> which I have translated as:
> 
>       The real basis of a person’s personality is the
>       totality of their life-projects, which are social by
>       nature, but life-projects which are realised, and
>       they are realised by their activity, or more
>       precisely, by the totality of their various
>       activities.Here we have in mind in particular the
>       activities of the subject that are initial “units”
>       of the psychological analysis of personality ‒ not
>       actions, not operations, not psychophysiological
>       functions or the blocks of these functions, which
>       characterise activity, but not directly personality.
> 
> But there are parts of this which are really unclear to me, and perhaps a better translation would clear it up. The standard English translation does not help.
> 
> Andy
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/