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Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Michelle
Woods Centre for
Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University Literary translation studies has often focused on the
mediative function of the translator in relation to the author and his/her
work to the extent that other mediative influences have been effaced. This
paper, with material from the archives of two translators (Peter Kussi and
Vera Blackwell) and an editor (Nancy Nicholas at Alfred A. Knopf), examines
the less explicit mediative function of other institutional agencies –
editors, publishers, producers, critics – in importing ‘foreign’ writers
into, and constructing ‘foreigness’ in, the English-speaking world. The paper focuses on two Czech
writers, Milan Kundera and Václav Havel, and the means by which their work
was translated into the ‘anglosaxon sphere’. Moving beyond an analysis of
the translator/author relationship, the paper examines the influence of
other mediative agencies and why their influence has been ignored in
critical analyses of the work and of the representation of the authors in
the English-speaking world. In comparing both Kundera and Havel’s cases, the
paper suggests that the attitudes and agendas put forward by American and
British cultural institutions and influential cultural figures in the
cross-cultural transfer of Czech writing were highly appropriative. It
examines the reasons behind this: the financial pressures to produce texts
palatable (in the eyes of the publisher/theatre/agent) to a domestic
audience to engender commercial success; the cultural pressures to contain
the texts within recognizable forms of discourse and within recognizable
ideological bounds; and the proprietarial needs to ‘own’ and to ‘understand’
the material. The paper suggests that these two cases demonstrate
the reach of mediative agencies other than the translator in the
crosscultural transfer of texts and of cultures. It suggests that the
representation of Czech literature has been forged by Western economic and
cultural demands through the agency of economically or culturally powerful
institutions or figures. Finally the paper questions the implicit
concealment of these agencies in the revelation of controversies between the
authors and their translators and questions the role of archival research
and accessibility in light of this.
Panel 3: Empowering Research in Crosscultural Communication - The Role of
International and Pan-National Institutions
Secret Agencies: Looking Behind
the Author/Translator Mirror
© IATIS 2003