Perspectives Studies in Translation Theory and Practice: Special Issue on 'Turning the Page. Para-Literary Translation in Periodicals'

Amid a massive wave of digitisation and the development of digital methods, many millions of pages from periodicals have recently begun to become truly accessible to scholarship, establishing an archival foundation for wide-ranging research questions which had previously been difficult to ask, and nearly impossible to answer. An upsurge of scholarly interest in periodicals, magazines, newspapers and reviews has resulted. However, even as research has been decisively reconfigured, the numerous acts of direct and indirect cultural translation that composed and defined periodicals have remained underexplored. Such neglect ignores the centrality of translated content to the cultural impact of periodicals, and to the generation and (re)composition of publishable matter. This neglect is even more striking for para-literary texts; that is, commercial, popular, or genre fiction, serialised fiction, or criticism which exert tremendous cultural force but generally remains understudied.

This thematic issue of Perspectives attempts to turn the page on this double hiatus, forging links between translation and periodical studies in order to examine para-literary periodical translations. The issue particularly hopes to bring together a series of papers that proceed from focused case studies to broader methodological and conceptual conversations. Its aim is to consider a range of approaches on a wide cross-section of languages and periods; seizing on the momentum of the transnational and medial turn, its specific interest is in (1) defining periodicals as transnational print media ecologies to examine their interaction with other media forms, as well as the materiality of publishing translations in periods of scissors-and-paste journalism and the use of syndicated content; (2) considering the sociability and complexly multiple authorship, in particular in regard to translation, that is key to understand the periodical’s dynamics within a wider web of social institutions; and (3) investigating translation in low- and middle-brow periodicals that make up the bulk of periodical output. The key question which this volume seeks to ponder is whether periodical translation can be argued to have distinct qualities that distinguish the practice from other forms of translation.

Suggested topics for papers include:

• theoretical contributions, defining translation in periodicals and sharpening terminology
• methodological contributions, in particular focusing on Digital Humanities tools for Translation Studies research
• transnational networks and periodicals
• the limits of the transnational paradigm
• translation as cultural mediation in periodicals
• visual analyses of translation in periodicals
• in/visibility of translation and translators in periodicals
• migrant/diaspora periodicals
• translation in children’s magazines
• archival examinations of editorial practices
• sociology of translation, identifying translators and other actors involved in periodical publishing
• translators’ periodicals and translation discourse in periodicals
• translational and localization practices of comics
• transnational periodicals as furnishers of content for local or regional periodicals
• syndicated fiction
• readers’ responses to translation (readers’ letters etc.)

Deadline for abstracts: 1 September 2023

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