Lengua y mercado en el mundo hispanohablante: un acercamiento al estado de la traducción literaria

This paper analyzes the status of literary translation in Spanish America and its conditions of production. Working with the Argentinean case as an exam-ple, we try to explain the logic of a cultural field strongly shaped by editorial globalization and economic dependency on the former home country. We discuss a number of theoretical issues related to the possible existence of a mega-polysystem linking the Spanish-speaking countries and their literary systems, as a way to approach the complex relations between a supraregional language and the national States sharing it. In this context, we analyze the unequal distribution of Spanish dialectal variations in the verbal market, and we examine the strategies that aim at resisting this kind of cultural dependency.

Translation, ideology, and creativity

Early translation studies scholars explored the relationship between translation and literary creation, showing that translation serves innovative purposes in literary systems that are in crisis, or that are weak or relatively young. Translation also acts as an ‘alibi ’for the introduction of difference. These early explorations leave out the role of ideology in the creative aspects of translation, a role articulated in both discourse theory and postcolonial theory. As a form of linguistic interface, translation introduces discourse shifts, destabilizes received meanings, creates altern ate views of reality, establishes new representations, and makes possible new identities. All these changes can produce creative results in a literary system and a culture. These creative dimensions of translation are particularly apparent in post-colonial contexts, illustrated here by the nexus of language interface, translation, and literary creativity in Ireland from the end of the nineteenth century to the present.

The War of the Worlds May Well Start in Latin America

This article analyses the literature-cinema dialogue established by the Ecuadorian writer Gabriela Alemán in her short story collection La muerte silba un blues (2014). Firstly, I revise how Alemán borrows the production methods of the cult Spanish filmmaker Jesús “Jess” Franco to craft a collection that aids us to see the world as an interconnected whole. Secondly, I close read the story that opens the collection, El extraño viaje, which takes Orson Welles’ radiophonic adaptation of The War of the Worlds to the Ecuadorian context. My argument is that, in making the city of Quito the target of H.G. Wells’ Martian invasion, Alemán engages with a rich history of multimedia adaptations and places Ecuador’s capital at the centre of a global narrative. I argue that her work decentres and recentres world literature dynamics where Latin American literature in general, and Ecuadorian writing in particular, sit at the periphery of world literary systems.

The Reception of Las madres no by Katixa Agirre Maternity and Narration in the Basque and Castilian Literary Systems

This article analyses the positive reception of Katixa Agirre’s novel Las madres no. In order to contextualise these considerations, we will briefly present the writer’s career up to this point, and we will offer a brief narrative analysis of the novel. Finally, we will trace some possible explanations for the favourable reception of the book Las madres no among Spanish-speaking readers and critics: the originality of the text and the chosen subgenre (the crime thriller); the recent boom of publications on the topic of motherhood in Spanish and Latin-American recent literatures; and also the role played by the publishing house, Tránsito Libros, an independent and fairly young company with a strong presence in social networks which has attracted some enthusiastic followers within the Spanish readership. The combination of these different elements may explain why Las madres no has received more attention than other works by the same author, and by other Basque writers who have been translated into Spanish.

National images and their reception through football literature

As demonstrated extensively by translation studies, national images and their reception undergo significant changes in the transfer process to another culture. From this perspective, La pena máxima by Roncagliolo is an interesting case: not only is the plot tied in with the theme of football, which is widely believed to embody national identity, but it has also been commented on in different target cultures. The reception study displays how the images of Argentina and Peru, which the novel deconstructs by using the 1978 World Cup as a pretext to expose the atrocities perpetrated by their respective totalitarian regimes, are perceived in the Hispanic context and in the French and Dutch literary systems into which they have been translated. While the Argentinian and the French reviews skate over the gruesome reality, the Peruvian, the Spanish and the Dutch ones assume the negative images by emphasizing their socio-political relevance.

Fuzzy Language Processing in Translation of Literature: A Case Study of Dr. Zha’s Diary of Fighting the COVID-19

Aesthetics is a subject focusing on studying the nature and significance of beauty (including beauty in language, art, literature, etc.). Moreover, the development of aesthetics, within the broader context of literary systems, is of significant importance. Chinese Literature (which in essence differs from that of English Literature) expresses beauty using its unique ways, especially with the employment of fuzzy language (also known as “vague language”). By including a certain degree of “fuzziness”, Chinese Literature grants readers room fir imagination. However, the process of translating Chinese fuzzy language into other languages is not an easy feat to accomplish. Such translations can, to a large extent, seriously affect the original meaning of the text. To explore proper ways of “fuzzy language” translation, this paper ventures to analyze the processing methods used in the translated work “Dr. Zha’s Diary of Fighting the COVID-19”. Categorizing vague language into three perspectives, namely, semantic vagueness, cultural vagueness and rhetorical vagueness, the paper analyzes the way to tackle fuzzy language with 16 detailed cases. Based on the case analyses, the paper proposes that the proper translation of fuzzy language in literature will be more conducive for readers to appreciate the works and helps to improve the translation quality. By exploring the ways of processing fuzzy language, this paper hopes to bring some suggestions and inspiration to other researchers.

Literary communication: from semiotic models to a theory of linguistic aesthetics

The article explores literary communication as one of the types of linguistic communica­tion. The main objective is to develop a linguo-aesthetic model of literary communication based on the models of the sign, semiosis and communication adopted in linguistics, semiotics and poetics. The author employs semiotic methods of modelling the sign and communication, developed in the works of Frege, Peirce, Shpet, Mukařovsky, Jakobson, Lotman, Eco, Novikov, and Zolyan. The emphasis is laid on the models of the sign and the corresponding models of semiosis in relation to literary systems. The concept of literary communication is given a new definition; it refers to the interaction of the author as an artist and the reader (viewer, listen­er) through a message or an utterance as a work of art. A correlation is established between the structure of the literary sign and the structure of the act of literary communication. The linguo-aesthetic model of artistic communication reflects the correspondence between types of literary signs and elements of communication.

A Critical Analysis of the Post-structuralist Thought with Reference to ‘The Death of the Author’ by Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes in his famous essay “The Death of the Author” from a post-structuralist position took a stand against the notion of authority in a text. He while referring to the myth of Sarrasine in Balzac asks certain essential question regarding the position of authorship. For him the author only is a participant in the existing discourse of the time—a mere explorer of the existing symbols and pre-existing linguistic and literary systems. One the other hand he only narrates the events through the existing codes but never participates in it. It is here where Barthes connotes that the author might be praised for his mastery over the existing codes but not for his genius. Likewise, Barthes explores various concepts of post-enlightenment to give his concept of the death of the author not in a literary sense where the work is found importance rather than the author who is the product of the industrial strategy and his position changes over time according to the changes in society.

Finnish Literature Meets Romanian Literature in Hungarian. The case of the La Fontaine Literary Society

In this study, I examine how Finnish literature meets Romanian literature in the activities of a literary society based in Hungary, the La Fontaine Society. Using André Lefevere’s concepts (literary system, rewriting, patronage, institutions, poetics, ideology, manipulation), I am looking for the answer to what motivated the selection of works for translation and publication. My aim is to show and point out the factors that facilitate the meeting of two peripheral or small literatures, literary systems in a third language, which can also be considered peripheral and small – through translations.

The House for the Students of the Empire (CEI), African women poets from the 1950s, and Sarah Maldoror’s films

In the 1950s, in Lisbon, several students coming from different Portuguese colonies in Africa met at “CEI - Casa dos Estudantes do Império” - a cultural and leisure centre for college students and other scholars from Africa or Asia. I would highlight names such as Amílcar Cabral (1924-1973), Mário Pinto de Andrade (1928-1990) and Agostinho Neto (1922-1979), famous activists that, at the time, invested in cultural forms of resistance against colonialism, being literature a means to raise political awareness among students. The high-profile women writers in this millieu were Noémia de Sousa (1926-2002), Alda Lara (1930-1962) and Alda do Espírito Santo (1926-2010). My research will assess the role of these three women in the cultural front of a collective political awakening, which later led to the independence struggles of the Portuguese colonies. These three women were also the first canonised women writers in their own national literary systems, thus being founding figures in a women’s genealogy of literary achievement. However, their works also the represent a particular generation, framed by the atmosphere lived at CEI. As a consequence of the political activism developed by the CEI millieu, some of the involved young scholars had to leave Portugal going into exile in Paris, where they gathered around the magazine Présence Africaine. This paper also explores CEI’s “Paris connection”, via Mário Pinto de Andrade and his wife, the film director Sarah Maldoror (1938-), who eventually adapted Luandino Vieira’s texts to cinema (Monangambé, 1968 and Sambizanga, 1972). At the time, Maldoror’s work was conceived as a means to promote international awareness of the regime Angolan people were fighting against. The final aim of the research is to explore the articulation among the works by these four women in relation to CEI’s activism.