Geopolitics of literary translation. The Literary Colloquium Berlin and the Streams of Translation in Europe

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Heribert Tommek
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 453844027

The project examines the development of the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB) into a center for literary translation funding in a national and European context. The aim of the project is firstly the historical reconstruction of this development, secondly a sociological analysis and interpretation of the translation streams leading through the LCB, especially in the years 1993-2009, when the Federal Foreign Office and other funding institutions supported the translations of literature from Central and Eastern Europe at the LCB . On the one hand, the study is based on archive studies, on the other hand it uses methods of field analytical translation science. The key questions of the project are: how the LCB was able to develop into a central location for literary translation funding, which literary-symbolic, cultural-political and (publishing) economic strategies were connected with this development and finally how the literary diversity produced by the translations of "smaller literatures" from Central and Eastern Europe in particular influenced the modernization of German-language contemporary literature in the transnational polysystem.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants