Spaces of Translation: European Magazine Cultures, c. 1945-65
European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
Final Report Abstract
This project has explored the role played by European identity in post-war magazine culture (1945-1965) through the lens of translation. It has investigated across three language areas – French, German, English – how journals articulated a reconfigured notion of European identity after the catastrophe of World War Two. It is the first project of its kind to use large-scale data capture to investigate for the genre of the cultural magazine longer-term patterns of translation activity and flow in a triangular constellation. It has also broken new ground in its reconstruction and visualisation of networks between journals – their shared authors, texts and translators – as well as the networks in which editors and translators moved as cultural mediators. The project has gained new insights in three main areas: translatorial agency in postwar journal culture, the different emphases placed by the various magazines on the genres of the translated works they included, and the interconnection between linguistic variety and European identity in cultural magazines of the period. Those translators who were named, “visible”, figures in the magazines often played an editorial role as gatekeepers for the texts published. The selection of texts was governed partly by personal interests developed pre-war, thus creating continuity between translational production before and after the Second World War. Some translators forged new alliances through their own (enforced) mobility, which brought other voices into the debate about how Europe could be shaped in a post-war world. Our merged datasets identified translators as contributors to more than one journal, thus highlighting the existence of translational “oeuvres” within the periodical field. Many translators in our corpus were anonymous: this group of non-identified translators doubtless included women, and archival research reveals that some journals worked with “pools” – i.e. placing translation on a par with secretarial work. Named translators tended to work with literary texts, which suggests a link between translatorial visibility and the cultural capital of those genres. There were marked discrepancies between the journals: for example, in the German-language journals non-fictional prose ranked highest, doubtless as a response to the urgent need for neutral topical information after years of censorship. While the project concentrated solely on three target languages – English, French and German – we were surprised by the diversity of the source languages, numbering 65 in total, and ranging from Croatian to Rumanian and Yoruba, but also including historical forms such as Old Provençal. Thus, while some journals were resolutely European in outlook and drew on a limited number of Western languages, others incorporated a much broader language range, thus identifying concerns with connections between Europe and global cultural developments e.g. decolonisation. Our data set also marks different peaks and troughs reflecting important junctures in Cold War politics, but also signals a general decline in translations over the period, which more generally reflects the rise of global English.
Publications
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Special Issue: Journal of European Periodical Studies 8(1).
Thacker, A. & Ó Fathaigh, C.
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Freedom and Plurality in Unity: The European Politics of Der Monat. Journal of European Periodical Studies, 8(1).
Steglich, Dana
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The Matter of Europe: Introduction. Journal of European Periodical Studies, 8(1).
Ó, Fathaigh Cillian & Thacker, Andrew
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‘The Radio, This Unknown’ and La Nouvelle Équipe Française: National and Transnational Public Spheres in Post-1945 France. Journal of European Periodical Studies, 8(1).
Ó, Fathaigh Cillian & Ó, Fathaigh Cillian
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“Don’t try to make me believe they’re interested in me in South America”: Reflections on Translation and Transnationalism. Modernism/Modernity Print Plus, 8(2).
Thacker, Andrew
