|
|
Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Kate Sturge The official cultural institutions of Nazi Germany
tried to filter literary production of all kinds, and not least the
importation of fiction from abroad. On the one hand, translation threatened
the carefully nurtured idea of purity and identity in the receiving culture,
yet on the other, it could also be deployed precisely as a means of
delineating that national identity. Translated fiction was read above all as
a representative of its source culture, and accordingly close attention was
paid to its entry into the ‘new Germany’. While translation from French, for
example, was chiefly received as radically alien, demonstrating the
otherness of the neighbouring and formerly dominant culture, translation
from the Scandinavian languages was welcomed as the locus of an alleged
Germanic or “Nordic” racial soul. The state tailored the translation market
to remove elements incompatible with this vision, and state-sponsored
criticism tried (by no means always successfully) to enforce interpretations
that could provide German national identity with a pedigree and a model.
Panel 5: Translation and the (De-)construction of National/Cultural Identities
The “Nordic” in Nazi Germany: Translated Fiction and the Nation-Building
Agenda
Aston University, UK
This paper will investigate Nazi translation policy’s construction of
‘Scandinavia’ as a specific geopolitical and cultural space – a project
which was clearly oriented on the construction of a specific Germany at
home. I will look at patterns in the publishing of translations from
Scandinavian languages in the period 1933-1945, and examine the arguments
used by state-approved literary journals in their reception and
interpretation of these translations. It will be seen that translated
fiction had a crucial role to play in the regime’s attempts to forge a
racist and anti-modern German identity – but at the same time offered parts
of the publishing industry an opportunity for commercially profitable
compromises with the regime.
© IATIS 2003