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Article published In: Target
Vol. 35:2 (2023) ► pp.262–284

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Translation and diaspora

The role of English literary translations in Slovene émigré periodicals in the US

ORCiD logo with link | University of Ljubljana
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the author.

Published online: 10 January 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.21088.pok
Abstract
This article revisits Gideon Toury’s (Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, . 2012. Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Revised ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) definition of translation as a fact of the target culture by highlighting the transfer of cultural images through literary translation in the periodicals of a US diaspora in the interwar period between the US Immigration Act of 1924 and the beginning of World War II in 1939. I argue that literary translations in diaspora periodicals fulfilled different roles and were used for strengthening not only intercultural but also intracultural links. The analysis of 4897 interwar issues of two periodical publications of the Slovene Americans shows that these periodicals continuously published literary translations: not only from different languages into Slovene, but also from Slovene into English. By means of the latter, Slovene immigrant diaspora attempted to construct their own representation of Slovene culture, and communicate this image to other immigrant communities, mainstream US culture, and the new generations who no longer spoke Slovene. The immigrant community thus became the promoter, creator, and receiver of these translations and simultaneously represented the source and target cultures, blurring clearly circumscribed borders of a distinct cultural unity.
Article outline
  • 1.Translation as a fact of which culture?
  • 2.Translation in periodicals and translation in and by diaspora
  • 3.Corpus and methodology
    • 3.1Prosveta and Nova Doba
    • 3.2Methodology
  • 4.Instruction and entertainment
    • 4.1Entertainment
    • 4.2Education
    • 4.3Translations into English
  • 5.The role of translations into English: New generations and cultural representation
  • 6.Conclusions: Translation as an intracultural act
  • Notes
  • References
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