Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations

欧洲小国的文学作品是用不太知名的语言写成的，这些语言来自不太熟悉的传统，它们都依赖于语言和文化翻译，才能让更广泛的世界听到。然而，学者和其他为学术和更广泛的受众执行这项工作的人，通常是平行甚至竞争的，沿着语言、地理和专业的线进行划分，不习惯于审查这种共同情况的确切性质和影响。因此，研究某一国家文学的学者可能会过于狭隘地看待它的处境，而比较文学的学者在想象一个超国家的文学组织时，没有考虑到欧洲较小国家的文学可能如何成为其中的一部分。面向公众的中间人可能只从他们自己的专业角度，在他们自己的商业、文化或外交动机的背景下看待他们的工作。该项目为首次持续比较分析欧洲小国的当代文学如何通过翻译进入文化主流创造了机会。它汇集了来自典型例子-捷克和斯洛伐克、葡萄牙、斯堪的纳维亚和南斯拉夫-的研究人员，他们在学术和面向公众的背景下担任文化翻译。这两个方面在项目的方法、活动和产出中都得到了反映和结合。通过公开研讨会，该项目将把英国的学术和面向公众的中间人聚集在一起，讨论他们对翻译工作的贡献，并探索他们遇到的机会和障碍以及他们使用的策略。在这一过程中与参与者的这种创新接触不仅将导致对不同中间人的角色和动机的更好的相互了解，而且还将有助于对当前这些文献翻译背后的文化动力进行全面分析。这些调查结果将以在线报告的形式公布，这些报告是与面向公众的中间人协商编写的，旨在供面向公众的中间人在以后的工作中使用。这些报告还将通过一系列案例研究形成，这些案例研究来自调查人员的专业领域，利用研讨会和面谈的材料，以及对定量数据、公共文件、批评材料和文学文本的分析。例如，该项目将研究中间人在最近斯堪的纳维亚犯罪小说的国际兴起中所扮演的角色，以及这种明显的成功对出版计划、文化认知和其他流派的影响。它还将探讨国家资助翻译的动机，特别是如何利用文学交流来促进宽容和公民社会的概念，例如在前东方集团或南斯拉夫，或者促进中心看不到的外围国家之间的政治和经济关系。一个项目会议将邀请从事其他文献工作的研究人员为这些问题做出贡献，这项研究将被收集在一本经过编辑的主要卷中，考察这些欧洲小国的文献在多大程度上可以被视为一个特定的文学体系，在它们与中心和彼此的互动中。通过更准确地确定跨境翻译的范围和限制，该项目可能因此有助于更好地理解当前欧洲国家之间文化和政治互动的复杂性。

The literatures of smaller European nations, written in less well-known languages from less familiar traditions, all depend on linguistic and cultural translation to be heard by the wider world. Scholars and others who perform this work for academic and broader audiences, however, generally work in parallel and even in competition, divided along linguistic, geographical and professional lines, and are unused to examining the precise nature and implications of this shared situation. As a result, scholars of a given national literature may view its situation too narrowly, while scholars of comparative literature, in imagining a supranational organisation of literature, fail to consider how the literatures of Europe's smaller nations might become part of it. Public-facing intermediaries may view their work only from their own professional perspective, in the context of their own commercial, cultural or diplomatic motivations. This project creates the opportunity for the first sustained comparative analysis of how, through translation, the contemporary literatures of small European nations endeavour to reach the cultural mainstream. It brings together researchers from typical examples - Czech and Slovak, Portuguese, Scandinavian and South Slav - who work as cultural translators in both academic and public-facing contexts. Both strands are reflected and combine in the project's approach, activities and outputs. Through public workshops, the project will bring together academic and public-facing intermediaries in the UK to discuss their contributions to the work of translation and explore the opportunities and barriers they encounter and strategies they use. This innovative engagement with participants in the process will not only lead to a better mutual understanding of different intermediaries' roles and motivations, but also feed into a comprehensive analysis of the cultural dynamics underlying the current translation of these literatures. These findings will be published in on-line reports, prepared in consultation with and designed for use by public-facing intermediaries in their subsequent work. These reports will also be shaped by a series of case studies arising from the investigators' specialist areas and drawing on material from the workshops and interviews alongside analysis of quantitative data, public documents, critical material and literary texts. For example, the project will examine the role of intermediaries in the recent international rise of Scandinavian crime fiction, and the impact of this apparent success on publishing plans, cultural perceptions and other genres. It will also explore the motivations for state funding of translation, and particularly how literary exchange may be used to promote notions of tolerance and civil society, for example in the former Eastern Bloc or Yugoslavia, or to foster political and economic relationships between peripheries, unseen by the centre. A project conference will invite researchers working in other literatures to contribute to these questions, and this research will be gathered in a major edited volume that examines how far these literatures of small European nations may be viewed as a specific literary system in their interaction with the centre and each other. By identifying more precisely both the range and limits of cross-border translation, the project may thus contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of current cultural and political interaction between Europe's nations.