Transcript Agency in translation: Hispanic literature in France 1980-2000

Agency in translation:
Hispanic Literature in France
1980-2002
Sandra Poupaud
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
October 2006
[email protected]
Summary
• Qualitative study of the mediator’s agency in the
translation of Hispanic literature in France from 1984 to
2002
• Mediators: publishers, translators, literary agents
• Theoretical framework: Bourdieu’s sociology of culture
• Agency is studied by retaining three dimensions:
– Ressources : what people can do
– Performance : what people do
– Discourse : what people say they do
Literature overview
• Overview of the literature available within
Translation Studies: equivalence, DTS,
German functionalism, the “cultural turn”
• The concept of agency is relatively
neglected and has not been clearly
conceptualized
Translation and sociology
• Sociological approaches within Translation
Studies:
– Bourdieu (Simeoni, Wolf, Gouanvic)
– Luhmann (Hermans)
– Actor-Network Theory (Buzelin)
• What (mostly French) sociologists have to say
about translation:
– Centre de sociologie européenne, Sapiro and
Heilbron
– Casanova
Bourdieu’s cultural sociology
3 main concepts :
• Field
• Capitals
–
–
–
–
Social
Economic
Cultural
Symbolic
• Habitus
The structure of the French
publishing field
• Bourdieu: “Une révolution conservatrice dans l’édition” (1999)
• 2 main poles in the publishing field: literary and commercial
• Classification of publishers according to amount and structure of
capital
• Antagonistic functions of translation:
– Economic speculation: short-term strategy, best-sellers
– Literary discovery: long-term strategy
Research questions and
hypothesis
•
Research questions:
– How does the mediator’s agency vary and according to which factors?
– How is the mediator's agency expressed through discourse?
– What are the values transmitted by the mediator's discourse?
•
Hypotheses:
– The mediator's performance correlates with the resources they possess and with
the position they occupy at a given moment in the publishing field
– The translator's agency will be greater at the literary end of the field, while it will
be reduced at the commercial end
– The representation of agency conveyed by the mediators' discourse may not
correspond to their performance
– The translator's lack of symbolic or social capital limits their agency.
Methodology
• Multiple data-collection methods:
• Data on translation flows from the UNESCO
Index Translationum
• Data from the ELECTRE database (for Spanish)
• Identifying informants: citation analysis of
bibliographical data
• Triangulation with available literature
• Interviews
Translation Flows
Spanish into French
Literary Translation Spanish into French 1980 - 2000
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
1988
1987
1986
1985
1984
1983
1982
1981
1980
0
Translation Flows
Catalan into French
Literary translation Catalan into French 1981 - 2000
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
19
81
19
82
19
84
19
85
19
86
19
87
19
88
19
89
19
90
19
91
19
92
19
93
19
94
19
95
19
96
19
97
19
98
19
99
20
00
0
Hispanic literature in France since
1984
• The end of the Latin American boom?
• The rise of contemporary Spanish
literature
• Translations from Catalan
A few explanatory factors
• Expansion of Spanish literature in France:
•
•
•
•
•
Quality of Spanish literature
Weakness of French literature
General rise in translated titles in France
Low translation fees
Key role of translation subsidies
A few explanatory factors
Expansion of Spanish literature in France:
•
•
•
•
•
Quality of Spanish literature
Weakness of French literature
General rise in translated titles in France
Low translation fees
Key role of translation subsidies
The Hispanic community in France
• Spanish immigration : 19th century and Spanish Civil
War
• Important Latin-American community, especially in Paris,
since the end of the 19th century: diplomats, journalists,
writers, academics, publishers, Severo Sarduy (Le Seuil,
Gallimard), Gustavo Guerrero (Gallimard), Milagros
Palma (Indigo)
• Various publications, eg Annuaire des écrivains latinoaméricains en France
• Paris as a place of consecration (Casanova)?
Translators and publishers
Sources of information:
• Round tables on literary translation in
Barcelona (writers, publishers and
translators)
• Interviews (2 publishers, 2 translators)
Function of the interviews and
round tables
• Identify mediators, e.g. literary agents
• Seek explanatory factors
• Highlight the mediator’s performance and their
interactions
• Underline the role of economic capital
• Isolate phenomena which had not been taken into
account (eg censorship, publication in French prior to
publication in Spanish)
• Test and refine preliminary hypotheses
Two different publishers
• Le Seuil (Annie Morvan)
• Corti (Bertrand Fillaudeau)
– Translators are no longer
initiators
– Translators are always the
initiators : trust is fundamental
– Literary agents: suggest
manuscripts
– Literary agents: only to
negotiate rights
– Only good working
relationships with translators
– Translators who are also
academics are a problem…
– Subsidies are very helpful
– Subsidies are vital: no
subsidies = no translations
– Acknowledges the importance
of commercial criteria
– Rejects all commercial criteria
in selection of translations
General profile of translators
– Male
– Academics
– Publishers
What translators have to say
• They nearly always suggest potential translations : book review +
translation sample (10 to 30 pages)
• Sometimes chosen by author but this is very rare and only if the
author is famous
• It is very difficult to promote an author
• Power differential
• Some rather negative comments about publishers:
– “They are rude and very self-confident”
– “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
"She's a Terminator"
The role of economic and symbolic
capital
• The commodification of French publishing
• The key role of subsidies given by the
CNL
• The interplay of economic and symbolic
capital
Conclusion
• Preliminary results have partially confirmed some of our
initial hypotheses
• Further data are needed before any conclusions can be
drawn
• Further insights into the mediator’s agency should help
us gain a better understanding of the conditions of their
practice
• How will the current transformations in the publishing
world affect the agents ?