Cecilia Alvstad

The strategic moves of paratexts: World literature through Swedish eyes

The term “world literature” is used in a wide range of different ways. This article analyses the meanings the term receives through particular discursive practices of Swedish publishers that specialize in translated literature from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It demonstrates that Swedish publishers mediate literature from these regions using two complementary strategic moves: an emphasis on geography (cultural difference and culture-specific learning) and an emphasis on universalism. Both presentation strategies are Eurocentric, the first because it implies that a translated work of fiction is there to offer Europeans transparent information about the culture where the book was written, and the second because it downplays actual cultural differences. In addition, both strategies are Eurocentric in that they materially bring together (in anthologies and publishers’ lists) texts that have no other relationship except being from the South.

The translation pact

In this article I argue that translated texts and translational paratexts invite readers to read translated texts as if they were the originals, a hitherto widely ignored premise of translations. Although translations are produced by many agents in collaboration (authors, publishers, copy-editors and translators), they are generally presented as texts produced predominantly by one agent, the author. I therefore claim that there is a ‘translation pact’ at work in translated literature, a rhetorical construction through which readers are invited to read translated texts as if they were the originals. A narratological implication of the pact is that individual readers who accept the pact will reconstruct only an ‘implied author’ and not an ‘implied translator’. This view differs from earlier works on the implied translator (e.g. Munday, 2008: 11; O’Sullivan, 2003; Schiavi, 1996). The translation pact is most often constructed implicitly, but sometimes translators draw attention to themselves and manifest their agency, for example by discussing translational decisions in prefaces and notes. Against what one would assume from previous claims on the translator’s ‘visibility’ (Venuti, 1995), I demonstrate that the translator’s presence does not necessarily work against the pact but can rather strengthen it. The translation pact explains why readers, including critics, literary scholars and other professional readers, often talk and write about translations as if they were originals composed solely by the author.

Arguing for indirect translations in twenty-first-century Scandinavia

ABSTRACT The article explores why indirect translation takes place, especially in contexts where policymakers work against it by, for example, not providing translation grants for such translations. The focus is on contemporary Sweden, and the article pays particular attention to arguments expressed in favor of indirect translation in a series of 11 books translated indirectly from Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Tamil or Urdu. It concludes by suggesting that cultural policies with more permissive criteria concerning indirectness of translation could be beneficial.

Migrants on Skis: Norwegian-Latin American Return Migration in the 1890s

On January 18, 1890, about two months after having read a highly unusual job advertisement, twelve young men left Norway for Argentina.2 The Chilean railway company Clark & Co. had employed them to ski with letters and telegrams over the Andes. The top tunnel of the Transandine Railway was under construction, and postal service between the Argentinean and the Chilean sides of La Cordillera was therefore necessary, also during the winter months. The Norwegians were contracted in order to solve this problem. Less than two years later, only one of the Norwegians was still in Latin America; he had married a Chilean woman, and they were expecting their first of four children.3 Eight of the twelve Norwegian skiers had returned to Norway, two had continued to the United States, and one was deceased. The aim of the present book is to shed light on why so few of the Norwegians who went to Latin America from 1820 to 1940 decided to stay. This chapter will exemplify the issue through the decision of the twelve Norwegian skiers to stay, move on, or return. The skiers were employed to do manual work in Argentina right in the middle of this period. Their motivations for leaving Norway, as I will develop further on, seem to have been predominantly economic. Their case presents the typical combination of an adverse condition

Expectations Unfulfilled: Norwegian Migrants in Latin America, 1820-1940

In Expectations Unfulfilled scholars from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, Spain and Sweden study the experiences of Norwegian migrants in Latin America between the Wars of Independence and World War II.