Description
Book SynopsisThis book constitutes the most detailed and wide-ranging comparative study to date of how European literatures written in less well known languages try, through translation, to reach the wider world. Through case studies of over thirteen different national contexts as diverse as Bosnian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Serbian, it explores patterns and contrasts in approaches to supply-driven translation, cultural diplomacy, institutional support and international gate-keeping, while examining the particular fates of poetry, women’s writing and genre fiction, and the opportunities arising from trans-medial circulation, self-translation and translingualism and a more radical critique of power balances in the translation and publishing industries. Its comparative approach challenges both the narratives of uniqueness that arise from discrete national approaches and the narrative of tragic marginalization that prevails in world literary approaches. Instead, it uses an interdisciplinary mix of literary, historical, sociological, gender- and translation-studies approaches to illuminate the often pioneering, innovative thinking and strategies that mark these literatures as they take on the inequalities of globalization.
Trade ReviewReviews'This volume is a welcome addition to the fast-growing literature on translation studies, and on world literature.'
Theo D'haen, Emeritus Professor at Leuven University and Leiden University
‘
Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations covers a lot of ground and one leaves it with a heightened respect for translators and for the multitude of European literatures.’
Mads Rosendahl Thomsen,
Translation StudiesTable of ContentsRajendra Chitnis and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen
Introduction
1. David Norris
The Global Presentation of Small National Literatures: South Slavs in Literary History and Theory
2. Zoran Milutinović
Translators as Ambassadors and Gatekeepers: The Case of South Slav Literature
3. Ondřej Vimr
Supply-Driven Translation: Compensating for Lack of Demand
4. Rajendra Chitnis
Literature as Cultural Diplomacy: Czech Literature in Britain, 1918-38
5. Irvin Wolters
Exporting the Canon: The Mixed Experience of the Dutch
Bibliotheca Neerlandica6. Olivia Hellewell
Creative Autonomy and Institutional Support in Contemporary Slovene Literature
7. Richard Mansell
Strategies for Success?: Evaluating the Rise of Catalan Literature
8. Gunilla Hermansson and Yvonne Leffler
Gender, Genre and Nation: Nineteenth-Century Swedish Women Writers on Export
9. Paschalis Nikolaou
Translating as Re-telling: On the English Proliferation of C.P. Cavafy
10. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen
Criminal Peripheries: The Globalization of Scandinavian Crime Fiction and its Agents
11. Paulina Drewniak
Literary Translation and Digital Culture: The Transmedial Breakthrough of Poland’s
Witcher12. Josianne Mamo
Towards a Multilingual Poetics: Self-Translation, Translingualism and Maltese Literature
13. Rhian Atkin
Does Size Matter? Questioning Methods for the Study of ‘Small’
Svend Erik Larsen
Coda: When Small is Big and Big is Small
