This article aims to use the approach of Genetic Translation Studies to make the work of literary translators visible. Drawing on two case studies on the French translations of novels by the Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, I show how translation archives can help retrace different phases of the translation process. The private archives of translators Lise Chapuis and Bernard Comment include annotated typescripts, notebooks and sheet notes. Analyzing them allows us to glimpse hidden aspects of the translation process that are related to how choices evolve to fit with a precise translation strategy, as well as the translator's personal understanding and interpretation of a narrative.

The Translator, 2016

Translators often do much more than translate: they propose books, discuss strategies, compare editions and make suggestions on titles, typography and illustrations. While these processes of negotiation and management of the translation task are invisible to the public, there may still be traces left of them hidden away in archives. Historical sources such as letters and contracts throw light on the working practices of translators and on publishertranslator interaction. This article presents results from a study on two different archives in Finland: an individual translator's collection of documents and a publishing house archive, with materials from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The study also sheds light on the publishing scene in Finland and on differences between publishers concerning their negotiations with translators.

The Translator As Author: New Perspectives on …, 2011

Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies, 2016

This article charts the emergence of a new form of translation research that we term genetic translation studies. It explores the foundations of this approach in the French school of critique génétique, which developed a methodology for studying the drafts, manuscripts and other working documents (avant-textes) of modern literary works with the aim of revealing the complexity of the creative processes engaged in their production. This methodology draws upon different theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches (poetic, linguistic, philosophical, psychoanalytical, phenomenological, etc.) and has since been adapted to the study of other media, including music, cinema, photography, painting, architecture, and the translated text. This article analyses how genetic approaches have been applied to translated texts by both genetic critics and translation scholars. It highlights, furthermore, the opportunities as well as the challenges for literary and other forms of translation research w...

Using Technologies for Creative-Text Translation, 2022

This chapter looks at some of the findings from a questionnaire exploring the dynamic between literary translators’ self-image and their attitudes towards technology. The overall aim of the study was to include literary translators’ voices in the conversation on technological innovation in their profession in order to proactively assess their relationship with technology and identify potential solutions to emergent issues. The main focus of the chapter is on how the 150 participants constructed the notion of technology as related to their professional practice. In particular, it will present and discuss the findings on literary translators’ confidence with technology, the tools they use in their practice, and their attitudes towards both general and translation technology. Furthermore, it will provide an overview of how the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework informed the study’s methodology and analysis. The findings highlight a discrepancy between current research focus and literary translators’ perceptions. The need for a more inclusive approach to the development of tools and for revised technology training is also identified.

HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017

The structuralist principles of systems-based Translation Studies tend to conceal the social roles played by translators in mediating between cultures. Attention to slightly alternative principles might be able to initiate a progressive humanization of Translation Studies, possibly alerting scholars to phenomena previously overlooked. Two such principles are illustrated here on the basis of Hispanic translation history. First, if attention is paid to translators and only then to the texts they produce, the subjectivities thus revealed tend to display multidiscursive involvement (translators usually do more than translate), complex cultural allegiances (they are not always faithful or loyal to one side), and physical mobility (they tend not to not stay in just one place). The second idea is that translators can be seen as operating in professional intercultures, where their membership tends to be based on purely professional criteria (not birthright), they may adopt secondary positio...

Philobiblon. Transylvanian Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Humanities, 2021

In the last couple of decades, digital processes have accelerated what we typically call globalization. In contemporary scholarly literature on translation, then, the understanding of translators as relational agents has continually evolved. Scholars have, indeed, considered the importance of translators for the field of literary studies, but an ecological approach unfortunately remains absent in current research, since academics have relied either on deconstructive or pragmatist accounts of translation. Rather than passive mediators, then, I contend that translators represent an essential aspect of world authorship, thus examining the role of translators as a defining element of contemporary global culture.

Perspectives, 2019

This article discusses the revision process in a non-profit digital publisher led by translators and aims to fill the research gap with regard to the revision process in literary translation. ¡Hjckrrh! is a non-profit publishing initiative that has published 21 e-books translated from 7 different languages, with the collaboration of 14 translators. This article discusses the revision process in ¡Hjckrrh! by documenting the making of two e-books. We use multiple sources of data collection: 16 in-depth interviews with participants (translators, revisers, a proofreader, the cover designer); participants' reflective diaries; fieldnotes from our participant observation in the form of reflective diaries; e-mail correspondence between the participants; translation drafts; and drafts of the paratexts. This article describes the workflow and provides an overview of the revision process in ¡Hjckrrh!. The article pays special attention to the negotiation of decisions and the interactions between the actors. The conclusions show that translators appreciate a detailed revision and are willing to take part in the final decision making. The detailed documentation of the process shows that the boundaries between the various revision stages are blurred and that the revision of style and language permeates the whole process.

Translatio, 2011

This article offers a preliminary exploration of the use of translators' manuscripts in translation research. It will be argued that, aside from a philological interest, studying translators' papers is crucial in reconstructing the prehistory and process of translations. It will also be argued that such a study is crucial in analysing and evaluating the factors that influence translations, including the roles of the people involved in the translation process. More specifically, applying to translators' manuscripts the methods of enquiry developed by genetic criticism will be illustrated through a study of the available manuscripts pertaining to the Italian translation of Anthony Burgess's libretto, Blooms of Dublin (1986). The aim of the study is to show the importance of developing a specific methodology for investigating the prehistory and process of translation.

This article charts the emergence of a new form of translation research that we term genetic translation studies. It explores the foundations of this approach in the French school of critique génétique, which developed a methodology for studying the drafts, manuscripts and other working documents (avant-textes) of modern literary works with the aim of revealing the complexity of the creative processes engaged in their production. This methodology draws upon different theoretical and interdisciplinary approaches (poetic, linguistic, philosophical, psychoanalytical, phenomenological, etc.) and has since been adapted to the study of other media, including music, cinema, photography, painting, architecture, and the translated text. This article analyses how genetic approaches have been applied to translated texts by both genetic critics and translation scholars. It highlights, furthermore, the opportunities as well as the challenges for literary and other forms of translation research when a genetic approach is adopted.

2022

History and Translation: Multidisciplinary Perspectives 25-28 May 2022 University of Tallinn As highlighted by recent publications (Hersant, Cordingley, Meta 2021), translators’ archives constitute a rare, extremely precious resource for scholars of translation history, genetic translation studies, translator studies, and the sociology of translation. While the richest translator’s archives are well known among scholars of the field (such as the Lilly Library, Harry Ransom Center, and the IMEC/ Institute for Contemporary Publishing Archives), they are clearly not the only places where such important material can be found. This paper deals with the methodological challenges facing the researcher in translation studies who is working on writers whose papers are privately available but not (yet) fully catalogued and organised. I will first focus on archives as material spaces (Guzmán 2020), on the very challenge of locating and working with previously unknown ones, considering the archive itself as object of research. Adopting a descriptive approach, I will focus on the case studies derived from my own research of the papers of three contemporary translators, Jacqueline Risset, Peter Robinson, and Charles Tomlinson. In the first part, I will outline the research trajectory that the researcher can follow to find previously unknown and/or uncatalogued papers (such as translation drafts and private correspondence) and get access to them. I will then move to discuss the methodological challenges and necessary etiquette of working in a previously unknown fond, the ethical considerations of working closely with the relatives and at the authors’ home, the precious help of oral history methods, as well as the challenges of referencing uncatalogued material, still preserved in the conditions in which the author or their relatives left it – potentially working under their very eyes. This kind of research, despite its many difficulties, can lead to surprising discoveries, such as locating manuscripts that were considered lost, identifying authorial drafts, and working in the very same environment in which the translator worked, while often also gaining access to their library.

Traduction et conscience sociale/Translation as Social Conscience: Around the Work of Daniel Simeoni. Ed. Hélène Buzelin and Alexis Nouss. TTR, 2013

One of Daniel Simeoni's major contributions to translation thinking is his investigation of the translator as an agent of cultural production. This approach to the translator, in Simeoni's view, originates in a strong sense of social and geopolitical situatedness. Based on this perspective and drawing on Simeoni's arguments and in particular on his call to develop translator's "sociographies," in this paper I posit the notion of the "translator's archive" as an epistemological and methodological possibility to study the translator and for a genealogy of translation praxis. I investigate the significance of the "translator's archive" in particular to understand the place of literary translators and their social situatedness and agency in the context of the Americas.

2023

Machine translation (MT) quality has improved significantly with the advent of neural techniques. Some communications about these improvements have been the product of overeager marketing hype, but MT is playing a real role in the lives of many human translators today. MT has even started to be used in pilot studies for the translation of literature, with results that outperformed anticipated outcomes. Nonetheless, its use and uptake as well as the acknowledgement of its potential merit are meeting with a degree of resistance, especially among some more experienced literary translators. In other areas, translators have complained about tools being foisted upon them, and have sought consultation on the design of translation technology. There are examples where translator input into tool design has happened to good effect, but in literary translation per se, translators have been recorded as avoiding such conversations. In this article, we investigate why some literary translators behave differently to their peers in other fields of translation. Finally, we offer pointers as to how translation technology, MT in particular, could benefit literary translators who have an open mind concerning technology.

Translation and Literature 23(3), 2011: 266-69. Federico Federici, Translation as Stylistic Evolution: Italo Calvino, Creative Translator of Raymond Queneau (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009).

This book starts from one main premise: a literary translation makes an original. This is bolstered with a series of related ideas that are fleshed out in five interesting and detailed case studies, further cementing the argument that literary translation does not first and foremost transfer meaning or produce equivalence but stabilizes an unstable original. Karen Emmerich's argument runs counter to the conventional notions about source texts and target texts that have largely framed Anglo-American/European work in academic Translation Studies over the past half-century, and that underlie most non-academic ideas about translation as well – at least in the Anglo-American Eurozone. She states point blank that the binary view of source and target texts and the expectation of " equivalence " and " faithfulness " this brings with it, always condemn translation, to failure and to accusations of " loss " if not treachery.

A s one of the first readers of a new book, the writer of a foreword is in a privileged position. One is sometimes pleasurably surprised, and so it was with this book. During my first reading of Translators on Translating, I found much that was new to me. Yet Andrew Wilson is by no means the first to publish a compendium of writings in this field. In the past forty years, traductologues (the English term is "translation studies scholars") have published a large number of collected texts about translation: among others, Thomas R. Steiner

In our work on the style of the translator, we focus on the visually most obvious aspects of the translator's interventions in the translation process: the notes added by the translator. We base our work on the French-Chinese parallel corpus that we developed containing Romain Rolland's complete work Jean-Christophe and its Chinese translation. We can find, count, display and classify semi-automatically the abundance of translator's notes in Fu Lei's translation using textometrical methods and software, allowing for rapid statistical measures on the subcorpus of translator's notes and the visualization of the distribution of different kinds of footnotes in the text. The computation of the specificity of the vocabulary used in Fu Lei's notes reveals that, contrary to the common idea that the translator's note is predominantly a medium to overcome problems of un-translatability, he uses the notes to introduce his Chinese readers to Western culture. Moreover, his notes reveal his view on history and, more generally, on mankind as a whole. In this way, we can examine his ideas on the relationship between the author, the reader, and himself as a translator. The results, based on quantitative measures that allow for reproducible results not relying on personal aesthetic interpretations, confirm the special status of Fu Lei's work among Chinese translations.

Cultus. The Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication, 16 (2023), pp. 192-214. , 2023

There is a vast literature showing that author-translator relationships are often fraught with tensions which undermine trust between the two parties (Anokhina 2017; Hersant, 2017, 2020). These tensions are hardly detectable from the sole comparison of source and target texts but are likely to be revealed in archival material such as editorial correspondence or revised translator’s typescripts and galley proofs. The examination of archival material makes it possible to observe how trust between translator and author develops and deepens, but also how it can be jeopardized when other intermediaries come into play. This paper focuses on documents taken from the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana Bloomington. Both epitextual sources (such as correspondence with publishers and authors) and genetic sources (such as translators’ manuscripts and notebooks) pertaining to translators William Weaver (1923-2012) and Barbara Wright (1915-2009) are examined, with a view to better understand the complex interplay of trust and mistrust that takes place in translation collaborations.

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