Why? Because Translation Studies is a growing discipline. We can see this when we look at what’s happening in Scotland, but it’s also true on an international scale. Literary translation in particular is enjoying a revival. American scholar Edwin Gentzler has recently pointed out that translated literature is flourishing in the US, so much so that it is appropriate to talk about a “translation turn in creative writing.” We also have more hard data about what translations are published in what languages, because literary organisations are becoming more focused on collecting such data. This means that we can follow trends and compare national corpuses more easily.
Let’s look at translation in a global context first. A number of recent initiatives have challenged the idea, once commonly held (although hardly ever expressed explicitly), that the English-speaking world ‘doesn’t need’ translated literature because it is somehow self-sufficient. Words Without Borders, for example, is a new-ish website aimed at enriching English-language world literature by promoting translation. They also publish translated volumes, like the anthologies Literature from the “Axis of Evil”: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations (2007), and Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes of the Middle East (2011). Asymptote is an international journal of literary translation, which publishes four freely accessible online issues a year, each packed with translations, essays and interviews. PEN (Poets, Essayists and Novelists) International has over 100 autonomous, local centres worldwide, and translation is a vital part of their global fight for freedom of expression.
Similar initiatives can be found in the US. The University of Rochester launched the Three Percent website in 2007, inspired by the claim that only about three percent of literature published in the US is in translation. Three Percent has its own literary prize, the Best Translated Book Award, which in 2014 was awarded to Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai for Seiobo There Below [Seiobo járt odalent], translated by Ottilie Mulzet, and to Italian poet Elsa Biagini for The Guest in the Wood [from two separate anthologies, L’ospite and Nel Bosco], translated by Diana Thow, Sarah Stickney, and Eugene Ostashevsky.
The UK has a number of organisations dedicated to promoting literary translation, such as the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT), Literature Across Frontiers, and the Poetry Translation Centre. Notable British awards for translation include the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the British Centre for Comparative Literature’s John Dryden Translation Competition. Many of these awards and literary bodies have been founded in the new millennium, indicating a renewed interest in translation. Various UK cities participate in European Literature Nights, a lesser-known but remarkable initiative that brings world literature to local audiences across the continent.
This brief overview has been necessarily selective and can only hint at the pace at which translation and Translation Studies are growing worldwide. We’ll take a closer look at translation in Scotland next.
(You can find links to many of the websites mentioned here under ‘Resources’.)
Translation Studies @ Glasgow 