32(1) - 2020

Belge en temps de guerre, française en temps de paix : la littérature belge francophone en traduction danoise 1942-1973

Lisbeth Verstraete-Hansen

Title
Belgian in times of war, French in times of peace: Belgian francophone literature in Danish translation 1942-1973

Abstract
This paper sets out to study the Danish perception of Belgian francophone literature as it emerges from the editorial paratexts of literary works translated into Danish between 1942 and 1973. The study inscribes itself in the neighbouring fields of cultural transfer and translation studies. With regard to the intralinguistic inequality at stake in the French-speaking world, the study suggests to use the concepts coined by P. Halen to describe the Francophone writers’ position in the French-Parisian literary field: local, entrant [incoming], repenti [repented]. The analysis demonstrates that Belgian francophone literature – though written in one of the central languages of the global translation system – circulates in the manner of a dominated literature. The article concludes that even though the translated works framed for the Danish reader circulate without their immediate historical and socio-political context, they nevertheless do carry with them the structural issue related to their dominated position which influences the categories used to classify the translated books as either Belgian or French.

Keywords
Literary translations, cultural transfer, literary sociology, inter-peripheral relations, paratexts

DOI 10.17462/para.2020.01.04

April 24, 2020
  32(1) - 2020