Gisèle Sapiro

Translation and the field of publishing

A sociological approach to translation needs to take into account publishers, whose role in the international circulation of books is crucial. This paper focuses on the contribution of Bourdieus economy of symbolic goods and field theory to the sociology of translation. The first section introduces Bourdieus article “A conservative revolution in publishing” and more broadly his analysis of publishing. In the second section, I propose three theoretical and methodological directions for enlarging Bourdieus model to a global sociological analysis of the circulation of books in translation: firstly a displacement from the national to the global market of translation; secondly a focus on publishers strategy and booklist; and thirdly reception.

La responsabilité de l'écrivain

Un ecrivain peut-il tout dire et, si non, quelles sont les limites que la societe et l’epoque lui assignent ? Un ecrivain doit-il tout dire et, si oui, les lois de la Republique des lettres lui font-elles obligation d’enfreindre celles du pouvoir et de la morale ? Depuis le XVIIIe siecle, les discours sur les dangers de la lecture et l’influence subversive des hommes de lettres sur les esprits confortent la croyance dans les pouvoirs de l’ecrit. Face a eux, tenants de l’art pour l’art et partisans de l’engagement des intellectuels se retrouvent autour de la defense d’une ethique propre a la litterature. Ces debats, hantes a l’origine par la memoire des evenements revolutionnaires et profondement redefinis au moment de l’epuration par la « collaboration de plume », n’ont cesse depuis deux siecles d’animer les pretoires, le Parlement et les colonnes de presse. Cet ouvrage en restitue toute l’importance, intellectuelle et politique, a travers l’etude de quatre moments-cles, qui marquent autant d’etapes dans l’histoire de la liberte d’expression et de la morale publique en France : la Restauration, le Second Empire, la Troisieme Republique et la Liberation. On y revisite des proces celebres : ceux de Beranger, Courier, Flaubert, Baudelaire, ceux des naturalistes et, a partir d’archives inedites, ceux des intellectuels collaborationnistes. L’epilogue examine la redefinition de ces enjeux des annees 1950 a nos jours : les formes de censure se font plus discretes, la parole de l’ecrivain a perdu de son poids dans l’espace public, mais l’actualite montre que la litterature peut et sait encore etre scandaleuse. Gisele Sapiro est directrice de recherche au CNRS (Centre europeen de sociologie et de science politique). Auteure de La Guerre des ecrivains, 1940-1953 (Fayard, 1999), elle a notamment dirige Translatio. Le Marche de la traduction en France a l’heure de la mondialisation (CNRS, 2008) et L’Espace intellectuel en Europe (La Decouverte, 2009).

The structure of the French literary field during the German Occupation (1940¿1944): a multiple correspondence analysis

Abstract Multiple correspondence analysis is a method well adapted to Pierre Bourdieus concept of field. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the structure of the French literary field during World War II, when France was occupied by the Germans. The hypothesis was that the space of political choices is homologous to the positions writers occupy in the literary field. The MCA laid bare the structure of the literary field during this period of national crisis and the relations between positions and political position-takings. The first axis opposes dominant and dominated writers with regards to their capital of renown. This opposition corresponds to the political antagonism between, on the one hand, writers who support the Vichy regime or who collaborate with the Nazi occupying forces and, on the other hand, those who join or sympathize with the Resistance. The second axis enables us to differentiate between two types of consecration: institutional vs. symbolic. Heteronomy vs. autonomy is thus the secondary opposition around which the literary field is structured. While at the heteronomous pole, most writers supported the newly established powers (Vichy or the Nazis), at the autonomous pole, most writers chose to fight them.

Translation and Symbolic Capital in the Era of Globalization: French Literature in the United States

The discourse about the ‘death of French literature’ which has spread throughout the Anglo-American publishing industry since the 1990s raises the question of the conditions required for a dominant national literature to maintain its symbolic capital in the era of globalization. This discourse is a sell-fulfilling prophecy used as a weapon in the international competition and struggles within the world market of translation in a context of accrued economic constraints. The present article first confronts discourse to practice through ohHan empirical study of the circulation of French literature in the United States in the era of globalization, based on a quantitative analysis of all the literary titles translated from French in the United States between 1990 and 2003, on interviews with publishers and translators, and on archives. The symbolic capital of French literature appears to be founded not only on its past achievements (classics) but also on its present production, which accounts for 40% of the translations. Although most are novels, upmarket genres like poetry and theatre are better represented than commercial genres. The data also displays the growing diversity of translated authors, regarding gender and nationality. However, the high centralization of the publishing field in the Francophone area impacts the circulation pattern: most translated works were published in Paris. The article then turns to analyse the structure of the American publishing field, using Bourdieu’s opposition between small-scale and large-scale production: French literature is located at the pole of small-scale production, a factor that explains its growing invisibility. A network analysis displays three clusters of publishers: large conglomerates who prefer to reprint classics, university presses engaged in the canonization of modern French literature, and small independent publishers investing in living writers. A by-product of the stiffening of commercial constraints on the publishing industry, the discourse on the ‘death of French literature’ paradoxically contributes to nourishing the well-founded fiction of national literatures. On the theoretical level, using world system analysis, field theory and the concept of symbolic capital helps explain isomorphism by imitation in the global market of translation.

Translation: Economic and Sociological Perspectives

Translating and interpreting, the process by which verbal utterances in one language are expressed in another, takes on a variety of forms and functions depending on the context in which it takes place. The translation of sacred texts has traditionally been a source of social concern and religious controversy. Negotiations between rulers and states have, just like international trade, routinely involved forms of translating. The international circulation of movies and television programmes is accompanied by dubbing and subtitling. Literary debates frequently engage with translations as well, either as models to be followed or as examples to be resisted. Since it is impossible to do justice to this variety of translation practices in a single chapter, we shall restrict ourselves to one major form of translation: the translation of books. Book translations leave public traces; in the modern era they imply a transfer of property rights, are registered, appear in book statistics, and are publicly evaluated and debated. As such they represent an observable and interrelated subset of translation practices, which has only recently begun to attract attention from social scientists.

How Do Literary Works Cross Borders (or Not)

This paper analyzes the factors that trigger or hinder the circulation of literary works beyond their geographic and cultural borders, i.e. participating in the mechanisms of the production of World Literature. For the sake of analysis, these factors can be classified into four categories: political (or more broadly ideological), economic, cultural and social. Being embodied by institutions and by individual agents, these factors can support or contradict one another, thus causing tensions and struggles. This paper ends with reflections on the two opposite tendencies that characterize the transnational literary field: isomorphism and the differentiation logics.

Entre o nacional e o internacional: o surgimento histórico da sociologia como campo

Abstract: The paper focuses attention on the historical development of sociology as a field that can be analyzed using the tools of historical sociology. First, the work highlights the historical process of nationalization of research and training in sociology, in an attempt to transcend methodological nationalism. This is accomplished by studying national events as if they occurred endogenously, without the interference of international factors. Next, the text highlights the process of internationalization of sociology that intensified in the post-war period, in which the existence of a structure of academic power relations between the sociologies of different nations is seen, due to the material and symbolic conditions within the different countries.

What Factors Determine the International Circulation of Scholarly Books? The Example of Translations Between English and French in the Era of Globalization

The international circulation of ideas depends on a series of social factors and on the action of intermediaries, as Bourdieu pointed out. The circulation of scholarly books in translation offers a relevant site of observation of intellectual exchanges across cultures. What academic books are translated and why? This paper proposes a general framework of factors determining the translation of scholarly books and of the circulation channels. Six sets of factors are analyzed: power relations between languages and cultures, symbolic capital and other properties of the author (gender, academic position, social capital), properties of the book (content, form, length, “packaging”), symbolic capital of the publisher(s), editorial and academic networks (social capital), private and public funding (economic capital). Some of them are specific to this category of books, others are characteristic of upmarket translations, others derive more generally from the power relations structuring the global book market. This framework is grounded in an empirical study of the cross-circulation of scholarly books between French and English in the era of globalization, mixing quantitative and qualitative methods. In this period, the United States became hegemonic in many domains, including the book market, a process which started in the 1970s, while the French hegemony declined, without however losing its symbolic capital in the area of the social sciences and humanities.

Politics of Translation: How States Shape Cultural Transfers

Aside from economic and cultural factors, processes of translation and cultural transfer depend on state policies. Examining the cases of two smaller countries: the Netherlands and Israel, state policies for cultural export are shown to have had considerable impact on translations from Dutch and Hebrew. Through multiple actors and a variety of institutional channels, translation policy not only contributed to growing numbers of translated books, but also shaped the representation of the literature in these languages on the global level. In both cases, the institutions charged with promoting and representing national literature abroad have evolved from a more diplomatic role in international cultural affairs toward the role of literary agent to publishers, providing subsidies and other forms of support.

On the Social Life of Ideas and the Persistence of the Author in the Social and Human Sciences. A presentation of the Symposium

The Symposium is a contribution to the burgeoning field of research on the social life of ideas. It focuses on one central aspect of ideas’ life, namely the patterns and mechanisms of their circulation across languages and national borders. Inspired by a seminal article of Pierre Bourdieu on the social conditions of the international circulation of ideas [2002], this Symposium is especially focused on the travelling of ideas and theories originally developed in the social and human sciences. In this presentation we illustrate the genesis of this Symposium and explain the rationale behind its contents, insisting on the persistence of the “author” as a driving force in the social life of ideas – their assemblage, their consumption, their diffusion, their discussion, their legitimation, their transgression.