Author：Elke BREMS, Reine MEYLAERTS, Stéphanie VANASTEN

Abstract: This paper examines intra-national translation flows in Belgium over a 50-year period (1970–2020), focusing on how books circulate between two of the country’s official languages, Dutch and French, within a plurilingual literary space. By applying a “Big Translation History” approach, the study reveals the influence of language status, location, genre, actor roles, and publishing practices on translation dynamics. Notably, Belgian publishers control a significant portion of the market for comics and children’s literature, demonstrating a distinct national production culture for these genres, whereas a prestigious genre like the novel is to a large extent in the hands of dominant neighboring states that share the same language (France and the Netherlands). The paper nuances the traditional center-periphery model in Translation Studies ...

Vol. 9 No. 1 June 2025      Time：2025-07-17 View Citation

Author：Núria CODINA SOLÀ

Abstract: This article shows how collaboration reshapes literary processes of retelling and reads activist rewritings of refugee stories against the backdrop of the frame tale, which constitutes one of the main genres for narrating someone else's story in literary history. Focusing on Dina Nayeri's The Ungrateful Refugee, Marie Cosnay's Des îles, and Matthieu Aikins's The Naked Don't Fear the Water, I argue that collaboration redefines the vertical relationship and spatiotemporal division that characterize the dynamics between storyteller and protagonist, between frame narrative and inner story in literary traditions of retelling. However, by engaging with the paradoxes of (in)visibility in processes of translation, the article also points to the asymmetries that emerge when Aikins, Cosnay, and Nayeri, take on more agency in their role as activist retellers and ...

Vol. 9 No. 1 June 2025      Time：2025-07-17 View Citation

Author：Svend Erik LARSEN

Abstract: The relation between the three basic genres—epic, poetry, drama—is often characterized through comparative descriptions of form, themes, plot, and characters. Despite their multiple variations and subgenres, the overarching genres are grosso modo recognizable across periods and cultures. Yet, when the problem of translation is introduced in the genre description a fundamental difference comes to the surface. While epic and poetry may or may not be translated without losing their genre status or their value, a dramatic text must be translated from text to stage. The text itself may or may not be translated; but being only a pre-text for a performance, its status as a dramatic text, rather than just a text, requires a multidimensional translation for every performance. This constitutive translation—in a broad understanding of translation— ...

Vol. 9 No. 1 June 2025      Time：2025-07-17 View Citation

Author：Chengzhou HE

Abstract: Translation has so far dominated the discussions of world literature. While some like David Damrosch emphasize the role of translation in the dissemination of a literary work beyond its native context, others are critical about the dominance of English as well as some other European languages in the process of literary translations. In the meantime, the cross-cultural transmission of literature takes place via different media and across media. With the rapid progress of technology and performance art, film, television, animation, and video games have empowered the transmission of literature. Regarding translation, intermedial practices, and world literature, certain questions need to be addressed: What is the relationship between translingual and cross-cultural communication mediated by translation, and the intermedial dissemination of literature? Does literary translation facilitate the intermedial transmission of literature? ...

Vol. 9 No. 1 June 2025      Time：2025-07-17 View Citation