Call for Articles – Dedalus journal
Special issue
Collectors of Worlds: translators, history and fiction – Issue no. 26
Deadline: September 15th 2020 – CLOSED
Recent decades have shown the growing interest of translation studies in how fiction depicts or reacts to translation or cultural mediation phenomena (e.g. Cronin 2009; Kaindl e Spitzl 2014; Arrojo 2018; Woodsworth 2018). This interest has been on a par with the plea for writing more micro-histories of translation and translators (e.g. Adamo 2006; Pym 2009; Munday 2014; Wakabayashi 2018), which are themselves discursive formations fictionalized on the basis of biographical data, existing archives and/or traces of the underlying creative process as imprinted in the translated text. This special issue of Dedalus journal intends to cross-reference translation history, as enacted by its agents, translators in particular, with fictionalization of the translator figure. By giving visibility to translators, either as flesh-and-blood professionals or as fictional characters, this special issue seeks, on the one hand, to assess the extent to which both discourses – historiographical and fictional – are intimately linked and complement one another. On the other, it invites rethinking translation history and the translator figure through literature and other fictional arts (theatre, cinema, painting, or music).
The guest editors welcome the submission of original articles (max. 7,000 words, including images and references) in Portuguese, English, or French that work towards combining both discourses. Should contributors opt for focusing on just one of the topics, the article should pose relevant questions to a better understanding of the correlative discourse and pave the way for comparative interrogations.
Potential topics include but are not restricted to:
- How real translators are depicted as main fictional characters and what strategies are adopted in adapting their histories and stories into fiction (e.g. Iliya Troyanov’s The Collector of Worlds);
- How metaphors and images used in fiction to address translations, translators, their agency and the translational process compare with the discourse of the history of translation;
- How fiction deals with or subverts the author-translator relationship;
- How translators’ roles and positions in fiction corroborate or subvert their traditional roles and positions throughout history;
- How translational phenomena such as the belles infidèles may be seen at the root of ‘the translator knows best’, i.e. the translator-character who changes the source text on the strength of his/her ‘superior’ knowledge;
- How concepts such as faithfulness, loyalty and originality are viewed through the lens of fiction;
- How fiction corroborates or defies the historical image of the solitary, lonely, subservient translator;
- How fiction reconstructs and depicts translators’ personal archives that researchers in the history of translation attempt to access when conducting archival research;
- How the historical background of fictional portraits of translators is in tune with research about translators’ agency in specific periods (for example, periods of ideological or political oppression).
This publication is part of the research conducted in the ambit of the project MOV. Moving Bodies: Circulations, Narratives and Archives in Translation, hosted by the Centre for Comparative Studies at the University of Lisbon.
Schedule
- 15 September 2020: deadline for submitting article proposals to the guest editors
- 31 October 2020: notification of acceptance or rejection of the proposals
- 31 March 2020: deadline for submitting full articles to the guest editors
- March-June 2021: double-blind peer review of submitted articles
- Until 30 June 2021: notification on the outcome of the double-blind peer-review process
- Until 30 November 2021: deadline for submitting the revised versions of the articles
- First semester of 2022: expected date of publication.
Please send your article proposal (700-800 words, excluding references) by email to all the guest-editors of the Special Issue:
João Ferreira Duarte (University of Lisbon): joduarte@mail.telepac.pt
Marta Pacheco Pinto (University of Lisbon): mpinto@letras.ulisboa.pt
Hélder Lopes (University of Lisbon): trad.helderlopes@gmail.com
* Dedalus’ Editorial Committee also accepts submissions of non-thematic essays for the section “General Studies”, as well as book reviews.
Dedalus journal – https://aplc.org.pt/index.php/revista-dedalus
ISSN 0871-9519