Northern Crossings

Abstract

The four books in this limited series are an outcome of a major Swedish research project called 'Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures' , the aim of which has been to intervene -not least methodologically -in the current disciplinary development of world literature studies. The series is united by a common introductory chapter and approaches the vernacular in world literature across a range of fields, such as comparative literature, postcolonial literature and literary anthropology.

Looking sideways

“…Table 2 also reveals that several authors have had more than one translation into Swedish published, while Figure 3 shows the distribution of the number of titles by the same author. Interestingly, this dominance of female writers is in contrast to previous research on semi-peripheral translation into Swedish (Cedergren 2020;Edfeldt et al 2022), with both earlier studies reporting predominantly male authors. Moreover, it is worth exploring which genres have been translated into Swedish, not least in connection to Lindqvist's (2012, 229) claim that a diversity of genres is indicative of the centrality of a source language.…”

“…As noted above, the numbers in Figure 2 represent all translations from French, irrespective of their source cultures, which highlights the pluricentric nature of the language. In a Swedish context, research on translation from pluricentric languages has been carried out on, for example, Belgian French (Cedergren 2020; see also Edfeldt et al 2022 for a more general discussion), although the aspect of a pluricentric source language was only touched upon to a limited degree. And yet pluricentric languages, such as French, challenge the division between region and language.…”

“…Córdoba Serrano (2013) stresses the importance of translation subsidies from Canada and Quebec for the translation and publication of Quebecois literature in Spain and Catalonia, and Van Es and Heilbron (2015, 314; see also Schwartz and Edfeldt 2022) state that for translated peripheral literature, "support from non-profit institutions is often a necessary precondition for the translation process". In this material, there are three translation subsidies present: from the Swedish Arts Council, from la Societé de dévelopement des entreprises culturelles (Sodec Québec), and from the Canada Council for the Arts.…”

“…Research on Quebec literature translated into Swedish is scarce, with the notable exception of Cedergren's (2018) study on the translation of Quebec classics into Swedish between 1980-2015; the investigation in the present article partly overlaps with Cedergren's study in time but has a different scope, as this study includes all sorts of translations while Cedergren's study only focuses on novels that can be considered classics. Edfeldt et al (2022), who explore translation into Swedish and its reception in Sweden as a semi-periphery more broadly, also constitutes an important contribution. As such, this study aligns itself with recent scholarship focusing on the semi-periphery (e.g., Pięta 2016;Budimir 2020;Edfeldt et al 2022).…”

“…Edfeldt et al (2022), who explore translation into Swedish and its reception in Sweden as a semi-periphery more broadly, also constitutes an important contribution. As such, this study aligns itself with recent scholarship focusing on the semi-periphery (e.g., Pięta 2016;Budimir 2020;Edfeldt et al 2022).…”