Abstract This chapter contributes to translation history by examining literary interference in Czech original and translated literature published between 1992 and 2009, a period shaped by post-socialist disruption in literary production and circulation. Drawing on the literary interference hypothesis associated with Itamar Even-Zohar, which understands translations as vehicles for introducing repertoremes unavailable within domestic literature, the study adopts a synchronic, corpus-based perspective to explore interference under historically contingent conditions. Using topic modelling as an exploratory method, it analyses over 1,400 Czech-language books, evenly divided between translations and originals. The results show that translated and original fiction can be distinguished with moderate to high accuracy, while non-fiction clusters primarily reflect subject domains. These findings suggest that computational modelling can inform translation-historical inquiry by revealing structural effects of translation during periods of systemic instability, while also highlighting the limits of quantitative methods in capturing repertorial nuance.
Abstract This paper outlines the construction of a database and visualizations for Chinese-English translator networks in the nineteenth century. After discussing methodological problems that needed to be overcome to construct the database, the study highlights the advantages of a social network analysis approach for translation studies. The project demonstrates that Chinese-English translators in the nineteenth century were highly interconnected, with particularly dense clustering within two groups (missionaries and civil servants), but ties also cut across groups, showing a tight-knit community of sinological experts. The network highlights the potential of SNA in translation history, especially when combined with bibliometric and demographic data, revealing novel connections and patterns not apparent in earlier case studies, and identifying topics for further detailed qualitative analysis.
Abstract Many actors involved in the translation process within publishing remain largely ‘invisible’ in translation history, and relatively little is known about how titles are submitted, evaluated, and selected for translation. This chapter concentrates on the pre-translation phase in the publishing industry, which encompasses all the actions that take place prior to the commissioning and delivery of a translation and its eventual publication in book form. It proposes an integrated database that includes both submissions and published titles. To highlight the significance of the PTP, the chapter focuses on the reception of contemporary Italian fiction within British publishing from 1945 to 1970. Four datasets are integrated: one that includes published translations, and three that include submissions made to three British publishers (Allen & Unwin, Jonathan Cape, and The Bodley Head), sourced from their archival records. With this data, we model a relational database based on event logs, and we subsequently apply process mining and phenomenographic exploratory visualizations to capture, respectively, a dynamic and static view of the data.
Abstract Digital translation history has opened new lines of research by allowing scholars to examine women writers and the translations of their works through a comparative lens. Situated at the intersection of digital translation history, postcolonial studies and Maghrebi women’s literature, this chapter demonstrates how digital repositories can provide insights into literary translations in the Maghreb. Despite the region’s rich history, Maghrebi literatures have often been “approached from the lenses of colonial hegemony, either as postcolonial ‘Francophone’ literatures, or as marginalized ‘derivative’ literatures that mimic the ‘belle lettres’” ( Ait Kharouach 2020 : 446). As a consequence, Maghrebi literature and, more specifically, Maghrebi women’s literature, have largely been seen as marginal or peripheral rather than as part of a dynamic and growing network. The proposed study seeks to counterbalance this view by examining the “Arab Women’s Writing” repository, a project developed by Maria Assif and her research team at the University of Toronto. While this digital repository explores the works of Arab women writers and translators from North Africa, the Middle East and the diaspora, the present study will specifically focus on Maghrebi women’s literature, offering new perspectives on historical and cultural interactions between the Maghreb region and its foreign counterparts. In examining the contribution of translators to the circulation and dissemination of Maghrebi literature written by women, this study seeks to move beyond the traditional dichotomy between the French metropole and its peripheries. In doing so, it underscores the significance of the Maghreb as a zone of hybridity and cultural exchange.
Abstract This article investigates the strategies employed by translators in rendering the postcolonial Italian novel Madre Piccola (2007) by Ubah Cristina Ali Farah into English ( 2011 ) and French ( 2023 ), with particular attention to the linguistic, cultural, and ideological complexities of the source text. This study examines how the translators approached key elements such as multilingualism, cultural hybridity, and charged terms embedded in Ali Farah’s stylistic choices and how these complexities were preserved, diluted, or reshaped in translation, and whether the translators drew on Anglophone or Francophone postcolonial discourses. Employing Voyant Tools for close textual analysis, the article demonstrates how digital methodologies can support scholarly investigations of postcolonial translation and promote greater visibility for marginalized authors.
